Having A Ball
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: Motels & Hotels: the Winchester luck is all bad, and this time nothing's changed. Season4 spoilers up to & inc Sex and Violence - this story is complete and I will post chptrs as fast as I can. Has Sam, Dean, Castiel, Uriel Bobby & Ruby are offscreen
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer…All together now:**_The TV show _Supernatural_ and all characters therein are owned by assorted Americans, not me Anyway: this fiction is purely for the enjoyment of readers; no money is being made. All Original Characters remain the property of The Cat's Whiskers and may not be used without the express permission of the authoress. WARNING: SEASON 4 ISSUES AND SPOILERS IN THIS STORY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED (see the big capital WARNING above).

_**Summary: **_When it comes to hotel and motels, the players change but the game remains the same, and the Winchester luck is all bad. Add in two brothers in a state of virtual civil war and a dollop of the usual evil…

_**Rating:**_'T'/15. This story contains some fairly heavy themes, downpours of angst, and minor spoilers up to and including 'Sex and Violence' – it also contains a little of both itself. Warnings: some fruity language, deucedly undraped damsels (and boy toys), and some serious abuse of the Brothers Grimm.

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 1**

"No!" said Sam suddenly.

Dean swerved slightly in reaction to this and tensed, alert to any threat to his baby; he flicked a glance at Sam's face, perpetually grim these days, in the passenger seat. "What?"

"Third window from the left."

_There oughta be law…_It was a visual assault - a huge, garishly painted and grossly tacky1970s Elvis Presley lamp prominently displayed in the window that highlighted the begrimed glass and the nicotine-brown net curtain, neither of which had probably been washed since the same decade.

"So, they're proud to show their love for the King." Dean couldn't resist the quip even as he agreed with Sam's opinion – _ouch. _

"I am _not _spending the night in some place where the only culture around is what you find growing around the plughole!" Sam growled.

"Okay, okay, unclench your buttocks, you'll give yourself piles being that tight-assed all the time," Dean taunted but obediently headed the Impala back into the gathering dusk.

Sam didn't respond, as he once would have, with an ostentatious sniff meant to imply 'I'm above such puerile humour', but then Sam didn't respond to a lot of things as he once would have.

_Makes two of us_. Dean squinted slightly in the gathering gloom as he looked up the road for another, even slightly more salubrious, motel. Had he inherited his tendency towards short-sight from mom or dad? In the end it didn't matter. He didn't have health insurance in any name anymore and he'd never expected, deep down, to live long enough to need spectacles. And he hadn't…

He veered away from those memories, but there was nothing to distract him right now from them inside this chuckle wagon either. Sam had been, in order, astonished, then hurt, then furious after the damn Siren had captured Dean, not with a hot chick, but a great guy – Nick Monroe had been the ideal baby brother of Dean's every fantasy – attentive, interested, encouraging, courageous and supportive. Ever since Dean had felt peculiarly guilty – like one of those guys who ended up on some trashy daytime talk show as the guilty _'husband who left me – for another man!' _

Given the walk on the wild side Sam seemed hell-bent – and that pun wasn't even funny – on taking with his super-juiced psychic powers, Dean was afraid to contemplate what he would do if Sammy ever used those powers against Dean instead of for him. It was the new No.1 in a long laundry list of nightmares and worries that Dean had no answers for.

But it wasn't like he had any leverage any more was it? Sure, when Castiel had dragged him back in time and given him a ringside seat for Azazel's machinations he'd believed that wrath of god righteous riff he'd laid on Sammy, but that he been _before _their fun first meeting with the Bert to Castiel's Ernie. Uriel was the closest thing to a supernatural sociopath Dean had ever seen; Dean would swear on whatever soul he had left that chuckle-chops Urinal got off on genocide, no matter how divinely mandated his 'purifications' had been; a euphemism for fire and brimstone to rank up there with 'extreme prejudice' and 'downsizing'.

After spending quality time up close and personal to Uriel and having seen what Sam had achieved in the 'saving innocent lives' department he was only sorry he'd accepted Castiel's blanket 'Sam using his powers is bad claim' without comparing the evidence. Fact was, if someone put a gun to his head and forced him to choose between trusting Ruby and Uriel, Dean was already half-sure he would go for his black-eyed girl over the black-winged boy any time.

Or rather, Sam's black-eyed girl; another way in which Sam had changed, and not for the better – starting with the fact that he was even _with _Ruby. Azazel had murdered the love of his life in a fireball inferno and now Sam had been sleeping with the enemy for the past near-year, starting only a few months from back when he'd buried Dean…again Dean veered away from those hellish memories, the operative word being _hellish_.

But back in whateverinhell nowhere town the Siren had been plaguing, Sam had done the nasty with that doctor – Corinne? Katrina? Roberts? – despite being 'with' Ruby. Not that the fact that his brother, literally, had a demon lover was in any way a good thing, but Sam had always had a distinct, and kinda cute 'old school' moral perspective. If you couldn't be trusted not to betray someone you claimed to love, you couldn't be trusted at all. Sam had always been serially monogamous, unlike Dean, who, okay, occasionally focussed his attentions in different directions at the same time. The fact that Ruby was a demoness was irrelevant at this juncture; Sam had had sex with Whatshername Roberts despite being 'with' Ruby, another significant change in personality traits that had to be put under the negative column.

Which led to things like this epic million-hour drive across the bucolic rural Midwest in strained silence with nothing to listen to but the weight of pregnant silence and look at but the peaky profile of baby bro' as Sammy stared out of the passenger side window, clearly a million miles away. Dean felt that same disconnect more and more, unfortunately as driver he didn't have the luxury of floating off into dreamland, unless he wanted to put them dead in a ditch and force Castiel to do a rerun of yanking him out of the pit again.

And wasn't Castiel another big question mark? Every time Dean looked into those puppy dog eyes and listened to that hesitant, quietly-spoken but oh-so-reasonable voice, he had to consciously remember that he was _not _facing Castiel, but the human host suckered into carrying around Mr Wings. Assuming they both survived this roller-coaster ride to wherever it went, Dean was going to have a serious chat about being careful what you pray for because you might get it. After all, surely the other guy who had been lumbered with Uriel taking up house-room in his frontal lobes had been as equally devout as the guy 'infused' with Castiel? _I know what I did to deserve getting a pit-bull like Uriel sicced on me with that whole behave or die – again – riff…_but what had that poor sucker done to deserve Uriel squatting in his body?

Was there something up ahead…nope, copse of trees. Copse…way too much like corpse. Mind you, it had been how Dean had realised how whack his resurrection had been. Half a forest had been razed around his gravesite; which was why they were here now, wherever here was – en route to someplace else. Bobby had asked them to investigate another perfect circle around a grave and, though he hadn't said anything in so many words, Dean had understood enough to realise that the grave had been located in a cemetery where someone important to Bobby had been buried.

His unknown, long dead wife, maybe? Anything was possible, though traditionally, hunters ensured each other, and their loved ones, were cremated and the ashes, often, scattered. Not even Azazel – or Castiel – could have put Humpty Dumpty Dean back together if Sam had obeyed Dean's Will, though such a grandiloquent description seemed a bit much for a notepad sheet scribbled with six words: _burn, urn. Look after the Impala. _

But Bobby was the reason Dean was willing to drive all night. Sam didn't understand because he couldn't, even though he was sat just two feet and an unbridgeable chasm away. Dean privately suspected that in John Winchester's head, Sam had never grown beyond the gurgling six-month old baby that Mary Winchester had died trying to save. Dad had always treated Sam like a son, and Dean like a fellow Marine. Dean had loved his father, but Bobby had always been his "dad".

After all, Azazel had understood that chink in Dean's emotional armour…what better, or rather worse, summation of the messed up paternal/filial relationship could there ever be than the inescapable fact that Dean had _known_ his father was demon-possessed because the man _praised_ him and said he was _proud_ of him. _I know you're not really my dad because you're not hitting/yelling at me in a rage…_oh, dear old crazy Doc Ellicott would have had a field day if he'd got John Winchester in that asylum with Dean and Sam. Even though John had made up for it in the end – but had that been because, in hell, he'd finally caught the clue-bus and realised his paternal deficiencies, or because Dean the obedient daddy's little soldier had done his job and killed the monster that had murdered John's beloved Mary.

He would never know, and to be honest, Dean didn't really want to. He had always tried to accept what emotional scraps he was given, and accept he would get no more. Bobby had finally understood, when he'd ripped Dean a new one for selling his soul to save Sam…even Castiel had realised that Dean didn't believe he was worthy of anything – never mind a literally god-given job – though the angel had been utterly uncomprehending…'you don't _believe_ you're worthy…'

That wasn't true.

Dean had looked in enough mirrors to _know_…

_Continued in Chapter 2_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer etc, **_**see Chapter 1 – as before Season 4 spoilers!**

(NB – Maple River and Denison, Iowa are real places; to my knowledge there is no such town as Maple River or a Maple River Hotel)

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 2**

Up ahead, a flicker, left. He homed in; he was too tired – and too unmotivated – to drive another eight hours straight with Mr Congeniality here. Definitely the outline of a large building…Beside him, the Dime store Indian stirred to dull life.

"Dean –"

"Seen it," Dean having also spotted a large illuminated sign that declared: _MAPLE RIVER HOTEL, MAPLE RIVER, DENISON, IOWA. _

The sign was a painted representation of the building behind lit by electric tube lamps. Dean pulled into a wide parking lot in front of a large, three-storey stone-clad building, though instinct had him heading for a 'discreet' corner. Even in the rapidly increasing evening gloom they could see that the paintwork was in good condition and not peeling, the stonework was clean and not crumbling and there were even window boxes with well-tended flowers at various points along the frontage. Happily, not a single window displayed any garish homage to dead celebrities.

"Much better," opined Sam, opening the door with anticipation of a hot shower and a comfy bed.

"Probably out of our price range," Dean commented to Sam's back as his lanky sibling headed towards the front doors with the most enthusiasm for anything he'd shown in…too long to remember.

Dean followed him inside to a large lobby, well-lit and decorated in cream and green pastel shades; there was a semi-circular front desk that looked to be real mahogany top and polished to gleaming. A proper hotel lobby, and reassuringly clean.

It was very nice, until the zombie came out of the back room.

_Continued in Chapter 3…_

© 2009, Catherine D. Stewart


	3. Chapter 3

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 3**

In their defence, both Sam and Dean were weary. The sudden appearance of the monster was thus unexpected enough to make them freeze immobile, acutely aware they were each only carrying a very small overnight bag and _most _of their weaponry was in the trunk.

As they were in that momentary stasis, the zombie noticed they were there and jumped slightly, "Oh hey, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there!"

Now, zombies are not noted for their social chitchat.

It is a common misconception that zombies are – cue the oxymoron - the _living _dead. This is not so; zombies are the _reanimated_ dead. Zombies are nothing more and nothing less than magically animated corpses. Now, if you're say a young man who foolishly reanimates the corpse of his dead teenage crush within days of her dying in a car wreck that you were indirectly responsible for, you have a few days of, well, 'breathing room', until the zombie's higher brain functions start to deteriorate and it becomes increasingly homicidal.

This is because zombies are simply reanimated corpses; they do not think for themselves. It takes three days after "death" for the very last neuron to stop working, which is why the Lord waited four to resurrect Lazarus, so everyone knew he was completely dead. If a corpse is reanimated almost immediately after death, it will "run" for those few days on the most recent memories and intentions in the brain at the point of decease, but these quickly dissipate.

A zombie can only be animated using necromancy, the most evil and perverse of all wicked powers because it involves desecrating a grave on holy ground, and it is this vileness that requires an even greater wickedness to sustain the zombie once it is reanimated – cannibalism, a mystically induced and insatiable hunger for human flesh.

Aside from their characteristic keening moan, zombies do not speak because they cannot. A human being's ability to speak is due to the complementary interaction of a variety of physical factors, such as air being inhaled and passed over the vocal chords when exhaled, movement of the tongue, tensing and movement of facial muscles, teeth and so forth; needing to keep air to speak in their lungs is why vampires continue to breathe without needing to – a vampire that doesn't breathe is a vampire that can't talk.

But zombies' brains like their bodies are rotting sludge and they possess neither intellect or sufficiently remaining soft tissue body parts such as tongues, larynx, etc., to speak. Not even the most powerful necromancer zombifies any corpse dead longer than three months, for the simple reason that the creature's compulsion to devour human flesh is so great that it would simply be uncontrollable by anything or anyone in its relentless, ravenous hunger.

Sam and Dean were, therefore, understandably stunned to be faced by something that looked as if it had been in the ground six months and as if what put it there in the first place had been a particularly gruesome combine harvester accident.

"Unh…" Sam got out, with less than stellar coherence or incisiveness.

"Oh! Of course, this!" the zombie looked down at itself with the attitude of someone who has until a moment ago forgotten what they actually look like. "No wonder you folks look like you've seen a ghost! My name's Pete Myers, I'm the manager and the reason I look like this is –"

"The Silver Anniversary Ball!" blurted Sam with relief, finally seeing the chart stand over the other side of the room.

Following Sam's line of sight, Dean also relaxed as he took in the large poster displayed on it which advertised the 25th annual Maple River Town Fancy Dress Party – Silver Anniversary Special with –

"_Twenty-five hundred_ dollars prize for the best costume," he finished, turning to look at Pete with an understanding of why the guy had gone to town on the gore.

"It's a factor," Pete Myers grinned, which – _not _a good look on a zombie – and explained, "Having to run the hotel meant the owners, Mr and Mrs Hanson, didn't have time to go on honeymoon, so twenty-five years ago they hosted a fancy dress ball for the whole town; The Hansons stood all the costs if each attendee made some donation to the charity they'd picked."

"And it just carried on?" Sam asked.

"Yeah – this year the whole town had a collection and we got enough money to pay a 'best costume' prize, pay what it costs Mr and Mrs Hanson to hold the ball and make a good donation to this year's good cause." Civic pride rang in Pete's voice, made only slightly ludicrous by his costume.

Dean kept his face bland as Sam inevitably asked this year's charity was and moved his hand towards the pocket with his money clip in it. Heading towards the Dark Side of the Force or not, there were some things about Sammy that you _could _still count on, and being a sucker for every good-cause sob-story was one of them –

"…medical treatment for veterans…" Pete was telling Sam. "…a lot of Veterans Administration hospitals and psychological treatment centres were set up ad hoc and on the fly during the Vietnam War from 1959 to 1975 and the huge public opposition to the war meant a lot of them had minimal funding. The War on Terror since 9/11 means they're needed more than ever but many have never had any maintenance done since they were first built."

Dean pulled out his own leather wallet; Dad had been a Corporal in the Marine Corps and John's father had reached the rank of Gunnery Sergeant in the USMC; even as a hunter, Veterans Day had been important to Dad, and a lot of other hunters were also ex-military, or had been. Pastor Jim had been a US Army chaplain in Vietnam, Caleb Fischer had been another ex-Marine and Jefferson, currently somewhere Dear couldn't remember right now, had been in the Navy.

"Don't worry, we'll stay out from under your feet in our room," Sam assured Pete.

Pete, who had happily just taken the ten dollar bill held out to him from Dean, stopped and looked from one brother to the other. "Room?"

"This _is _a hotel." Dean couldn't resist pointing out – Mr and Mrs Hanson's manager was beginning to seem a bit of a flake here.

"I'm sorry, I forgot to illuminate the NO VACANCIES sign –"

"Aren't those coming to the ball _local _people?" Dean pressed, as in _having homes to go to_.

"Sure, but staying _here _means nobody drinks and drives and besides, I know I'd much rather let the hotel's drains deal with this gunk than my own at home," Pete gestured at his full on zombie get-up.

Fortunately Dean had his brother on hand, who obligingly gave it the patented Sammy soulful puppy-dog routine – he should have gone out for a role in that latest chick flick seen by any guy who wanted to get laid, _Marley & Me _– as the Labrador puppy.

Oblivious to his brother's uncharitable if accurate train of thought, Sam was ladling it on, "Not even _one _room? We'll take it – next to the boiler-house, not big enough to swing a kitten, no problem…"

Pete hesitated and Dean suppressed a smirk; _oh yeah, the Sam Winchester aw-shucks routine takes the field again_ -

"I guess…" Pete gnawed his lower lip – again, a horrific sight on someone dressed up like a zombie who'd been in a hideous accident. "We don't use it because it's not very…I suppose it'd be okay just for the night."

- As Samuel Winchester steps up to the plate -

"If it has a bathroom and a bed, we'll take it," Sam amped up the good ole boy gratitude a notch. "But we're beat – "

_- to hit the home run_ -

" – my brother's been driving for ten straight hours."

_And misses the swing?_ Dean blinked as Pete stiffened and straightened; his make-up caked face contorting horribly in what Dean realised, as the kid started to stammer, was embarrassment.

"Uh – look, no – sorry, the room really isn't suitable – I'm really sorry –"

"_Why _isn't it suitable?" he put a bit of snap in his tone, a hint of 'I've just given you ten dollars for your pet charity and now you're yanking my chain with your yo-yoing room offer.'

"Um, er, well, er, _itstheoldhoneymoonsuite_ and, er…"

It took a second to untangle the rapid mumble; for the first time in too long, Dean and Sam regained their ability to communicate effortlessly with just a single exchanged glance: _why does everything think we're gay?_

"Petey!" Dean cut off the stuttering flow, "_Breathe_. Like my brother said, we'll take it. I've driven ten straight hours and if it's like every other honeymoon suite in the world it'll be big enough for us to sleep in the same bed and both suffer St. Vitus' Dance all night without either of us ever getting anywhere near each other."

Pete's mouth moved in some _sotto voce _comment that looked suspiciously like 'it's _not_ like _any_ other honeymoon suite in the world', but the Winchesters had clearly won the round.

"Let me show you first," Pete negotiated.

"Sure," Dean agreed readily. He could put up with a bit of soppy frills and lace if it meant being able to cuddle mattress for even a few hours.

Behind Pete's back as he led them to the elevator, Sam glanced at Dean and shrugged, mouthing _how bad can it be?_

_Continued in Chapter 4…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	4. Chapter 4

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 4**

Very.

Very, very, very…unspeakably…unspeakable.

The plaque on the door had read _Original Honeymoon Suite_ as Pete put the key in the lock – key-cards apparently hadn't yet made it to Maple River, Iowa – and pushed open the door.

Dean took a single step forward and stopped in his tracks. Sam, behind his shoulder, looked past Dean's rigid spine to…

Everything seemed to assault the eye at once; the carpet had probably been intended to be some fancy shade like 'fuschia' but was simply neon. A massive chandelier was a huge _Phantom of the Opera _disaster waiting to happen with _pink _crystals, the lower half of the walls were smothered in a busy red-rose wallpaper and the upper half painted in a sort of Barbie pink/white hue and the sole bed was…

Huge, heart-shaped and abundant with scarlet and crimson and acres of white lace; the curtains were crimson and yet more lace. There was a huge old baby-pink fancy couch – _chaise longue _– in the wide bay window, completely ruining the rather graceful arc of floor to (nearly) ceiling glass panes. It squatted bulkily as if it had been filched straight from the set of either an old _Hammer House of Horror _movie set (Sam was reminded uncomfortably of a certain Prop House in Philly used by that deranged shapeshifter) or else some low-budge TV movie bodice-ripper as the spot where the breathless but pneumatically enhanced heroine is almost ravished by The Cad.

Every bit of furniture was cream or pink or cream _and _pink and smothered in doilies, lacy frippery or overdone tacky gold edging - even the closets were cream with thick gilt edging…

"What _happened_?" Sam was unable to prevent himself from asking and wishing his Blues Brothers style shades weren't still in the Impala.

"The honeymoon suite was a wedding present from Mrs Hanson's Aunt Eliza," Pete explained. "You take one middle-aged spinster with chronic short-sight and a touch of colour-blindness in the red end of the colour spectrum, stir in her being independently wealthy enough to be able to fritter away most of her time reading _Barbara Cartland _romances and garnish with a decision to give her favourite niece a romantic spectacular wedding gift. Since she was so near-sighted Eliza just kept instructing the decorators to increase the colour tones until the suite looked all soft-focus pink and fluffy to _her_ eyes."

"Couples actually stay in here?" Sam's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.

"Are you kidding? No way; Mr & Mrs Hanson were pre-warned so they made all the right noises, and as soon as her aunt went back to Portland, they put in the _real_ honeymoon suite. It's the other side of the hotel. But Aunt Eliza is still going strong – she comes to the fancy dress ball every year – that's where they are now, picking her up from the station - so, they keep it to show her."

_And about three seconds after Aunt Lizzie is worm-food Mr-and-Mrs will personally be gutting this place like a mackerel_, Dean thought to himself; Ellicott's asylum had looked better; hell, _Hell _had looked better.

"I'll tell you what, you guys _do _look kinda beat…Mr and Mrs Hanson wouldn't dream of charging anyone willing to stay in here so…give me a half-hour or so to finish getting things read for the ball and I'll bring you up…a couple of cold beers and a steak sandwiches?"

"Petey, you're a hero." Dean announced cheerfully. "It's a deal."

"The TV even has cable," Pete offered as if to make up for the enduring awfulness of the suite, looking relieved at their attitude. "I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

Sam followed Dean into the room as Pete hurried off, wincing afresh – nowhere was free of frills and flounces or some shade of pink/red/burgundy that often clashed hideously with something else pink/red/burgundy right next to it.

"If the bathroom's pink…" Dean muttered, half to himself and marched to the en suite door, turning the doorknob and thrusting it open to reveal – white tile with orange and turquoise colour scheme. But, unlike the main room, this tri-combo actually worked. There was no shower, only a huge claw-footed corner bath big enough to hold an entire football team if that was your bag, plus real porcelain toilet, washbasin and one of those fancy French _bidets_ that enabled you to hand-wash hard to reach anatomical features without being a contortionist. The overall effect was an impression of lush, sybaritic opulence that actually worked, rather than the main room's impression of being the end result of the _Queer Eye for the Straight Guy_ bunch hopped up on crack.

"Dibs on that bathtub." Dean announced, hefting the small backpack he used as an overnight/emergency carryall and shutting the door firmly in Sam's face.

_Continued in Chapter 5…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	5. Chapter 5

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 5**

The TV did indeed get cable. Going around to the side of the bed nearest the large bay window, Sam turned it on and to a sports channel, then replaced the remote on the bedside table and gingerly eased his long frame down onto the bed so he was sitting propped up against the numerous pillows, cushions and bolsters at the head-board end, wrinkling his nose at the spongy softness of the mattress. However, there would be no problem with him and Dean, technically, sharing it – the thing was big enough to easily accommodate the whole Walton family, all the Osmonds and the entire cast of _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers _and still give each person plenty of personal space.

All he had to do now was blot out the colour scheme – everywhere he looked was either sappy baby-doll pink or garish crimson hues. The bolsters and bedding were all silk sheets, that his jeans-clad butt kept sliding a few inches down every minute or so until he hitched back up; clearly very expensive, the sensuous tone they were supposed to convey would have worked had there been any modicum of decorating restraint, but the vivid scarlet clashed with anything else…and he slid down again. Sighing, he gave up the fight and patted the vibrantly coloured material; he couldn't speak for anyone else but the embarrassment of having to climb into this cheesy heart-shaped monstrosity, sliding between the garishly bright red sheets…scarlet silk…ruby red… …_Ruby_…like her, smooth under his fingers, sliding between her thighs, spread for him, open to him, deep into her warm silken sheath…

His body tensed and _not _in a flight or fight way – oh yeah, his teetering-on-a-knife-edge relationship with his brother would _really_ be helped if Dean came out of the bathroom to find Sam sprawled across this heart-shaped horror sporting a boner a cat couldn't scratch for his - quite literal - demon lover.

But it had always been so _easy_ for Dean…He'd always made cracks about Sam's 'freakishly long limbs' but Sam was large all over, and yes, size definitely did matter, not in a good way – it was possible to have 'too much of a good thing', at least, apparently, from the female perspective. Sure, Dean had a big package, but those purring women who called him 'well-endowed' had called Sam 'intimidating', and they weren't being complimentary. Dean had no idea how it felt to have the cramp put in your style time after time when you were really in the moment, only to look into the woman's eyes and see desire turn to doubt, and need to nerves.

Dean just didn't – couldn't – understand how seismic it was for Sam, being with Ruby. It wasn't just that she was so amazingly responsive to his lovemaking –

Although, okay, contrary to popular opinion, he _wasn't_ an idiot. Sam didn't know _exactly_ how many centuries would factor in Ruby's age, but he knew she'd certainly learned enough to flawlessly fake any emotion from anger to adoration, never mind an orgasm. Besides, in all those chick mags that Jess used to read, they were always having polls where 80 – 90 percent of _guys _'always' or 'nearly always' could tell – or were convinced they could tell - if a woman was faking her climax, but by the same token 80-90 percent of women 'frequently', 'regularly' or 'routinely' faked orgasm – or claimed they did - to avoid hurting the feelings of their husband or partner. One side _had _to be far more clueless than the other, and loyalty to his own sex not withstanding, Sam doubted it was the testosterone-endowed bunch that had the statistical high ground.

He could not have articulated it to Dean in any other way than as also being 'the sheer release of pressure' of everything about Ruby…Even with Jess, especially with Jess, because he'd loved her, he had always been aware of his much greater strength and size and his capacity to thoughtlessly harm her.

The very first night they'd spent together, Jess's ardour had dipped considerably when he'd first got naked. He'd been her second ever lover, and reactions exactly like hers was why she had only been his third. He'd been seduced at 14 by 18-year-old Dean's Amazonian biker chic girlfriend, who'd come over to the house and amused herself while waiting for him by winding up shy but fascinated and coltish clumsy Sam. His _very _fast learning curve had taken them both somewhere neither had intended but he'd finally understood why Dean preferred to spend all his time with girls instead of his younger brother. However, as she had got fed up of waiting and gone, she'd turned back on the porch and told him he had a _lot _of talent, but he might want to work on a bit of control because if he wasn't careful, he 'could put a gal in the hospital'.

At the time her words had bounced right off his misery and guilt over 'betraying' Dean and how Dean would kill him slow and painful when he found out. But it had taken him five weeks to pluck up courage to "confess" and when he'd casually asked after her, Dean's blank look and 'who?' response had absolved his conscience and brought to mind her critique. Given that he hadn't shot up that final five inches for another ten months, he'd taken the words to heart. And in short order before he met Jess, two separate girls had taken one look at his packed-out pants and halted the show cold on the spot, and a third had jumped off the bed like she'd been stuck with a pin and decisively informed him that there was no way 'you are putting that in me'.

So he'd clearly seen Jess's trepidation and uncertainty; it was why he had made sure they had dated for so long without that aspect so as to engage her emotionally in him and not scare her off by trying any 'hey, third date, where's the bedroom' riff. Even though Jess had loved him and trusted him, it had taken a good while that night to ease her nervousness, to ensure she was emotionally okay with them taking that step that night, and then ensuring she was physically prepared to accept him without discomfort…

Not that he _minded _any of that in the slightest, either then or now. Sam didn't _get _guys who wanted to hurl themselves onto the gridiron and score a touchdown within the first 30 seconds. Sex should be like Superbowl Sunday – fun and enjoyable, but taking as long as it needed to take, with even a couple of advertisement breaks if necessary for both parties to get their second wind and rejoin the game refreshed.

There were so _many _fragrant nooks and crannies to explore with a woman, so many sensitive places, so many smooth curves to stroke and soft, warm, tender spots to kiss and nibble and lick and fondle. Sure, there was always a place for spontaneity, and sometimes even a little I-need-to-be-inside-you-right-now frantic action, but generally speaking, rushing sex was like gobbling ice cream too fast – you didn't let yourself enjoy the taste and it just gave you toothache, so what was the point?

That was exactly why the simple, soaring freedom of Ruby continued to feed his hunger for her. That first night when she'd seduced him, he'd been so full of grief, and self-hate and despair, so lost to himself in his frantic need for escape, to not be in that hopeless moment any longer. Hating himself, Ruby, the world, even Dean for making the deal in the first place, he'd been nothing more than a mindless, rutting animal. Still Ruby had wrapped her legs tight around him and her arms around his back and she'd held him, and cradled him as he plundered her without mercy.

He'd seen the ginger way she moved off the bed, her wince from the soreness of the violence with which he'd taken her, and he hadn't cared, numb and empty inside. Nor had it mattered the time after that either – winning against two stronger fiends in a wood he'd simply pulled Ruby to the ground and greedily slaked his lust, uncaring of the bite marks he'd inflicted on her tender breasts or that he'd bruised her with how roughly he'd penetrated her.

And by the time it became important enough to him that Ruby at least find the process a moderately _pleasant _diversion even if not actually that much of a thrill, he had unconsciously simply been accustomed to the relief, the almost actual joy, of _not_ having to be the responsible one, not having to be the one who always had to think, who always had to be aware and in check and in control of his size and strength. For once _he _didn't have to be the sensible, dependable, reliable James Stewart character in _It's A Wonderful Life_, he got to be the dashing, devil-may-care war hero brother instead and _that _was wonderful.

The joyousness of for once being free of restraint, of restriction, of being able to experience without inhibition or guilt, was glorious and soaring delight, and why couldn't _Dean_ of all people let him enjoy it while it lasted, instead of everyone trying to Clarence-the-angel him back into Jimmy Stewart responsible dependability again? Was that too much to ask, especially coming from his ridiculously insistent 'I've been re-hymenated' brother?! But no, Dean, and winged menaces who should have better things to occupy their time carried on as if Sam were refusing to leave every town they passed through unless he had deflowered every nubile maiden in a five mile radius. That was Mr 'Re-virginated's style.

He fidgeted again, as much out of irritation as sexual urge. Ruby and all the attendant baggage was not a yelling match he wanted to get into right now, one of an endless round of re-arguments he seemed to be having with Dean these days, given that that would lead on to Castiel…and the fun-fest that was _his_ friend, Mr 'my hobbies are mass incinerating human beings' Uriel; Sam knew what the guy _should _have been called…_the 'n', 'i' and 'l' in his name are silent_.

And he couldn't believe _Dean_ moping around Castiel like an eager puppy either – all Mr Holier-than-thou had to do was flash Dean a soulful _don't shoot the messenger _look and Dean was swallowing the guff hook, line, sinker, chair and copy of _Angling Times_. All Castiel's riff about Sam using his powers to help people being evil because they _may _have come from Azazel and all the time 'Cast-off's' supposed angelic 'brother' was Uriel, who as far as Sam could work out was the most psychopathic supernatural thing the Winchesters had ever encountered bar Yellow Eyes himself.

Besides, nobody had ever _proven _Azazel was responsible for his psychic whammy, though he had certainly done _something _to it. Azazel had never bled into Missouri Moseley or Pamela Barnes' mouths so where did Dean suppose their psychic whammy had sprung from? Poor Pamela had also been _beautiful _until Mr 'I'm a good guy' Castiel had burned her eyes out of her sockets from the inside. Yeah, angelic indeed –

He heard a scraping and shuffling, and that was all the warning he got as there came a click of a handle and Dean exited the bathroom, his chin and cheeks still slightly red from shaving; he looked refreshed, but the dark smudges under his eyes were still visible, and despite the reasonable temperature he was wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt, unbuttoned, over his black T-shirt, specifically to hide the bright blister-red mark of Castiel's hand that was still there, unfading, on his shoulder, like a brand.

_Continued in Chapter 6…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	6. Chapter 6

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 6**

"Pete not back yet?" Dean asked hopefully, face falling at the lack of a service cart in the room.

Shoving his querulous thoughts aside, Sam shook his head; his stomach too was expressing great interested in thick steak and frosty fermented goodness. "But I got the game on TV."

Dean brightened slightly, casually dropping his now unnecessary backpack on the floor against the bedside table nearest the bathroom.

Sam, seeing him squint slightly, knew better than to call Dean on what was clearly an unconscious habit, or voice his own opinion that what his near-as-damn-it-thirty-year-old brother needed was _spectacles_. Besides, this affront to every tenet of décor was enough to make _anyone_ screw their eyes up. "Just slide past things," he advised.

"Huh?"

"Relax your eye muscles and sort of encourage your eyes to just sort of slide over everything without really _looking _at them; doesn't totally take away the pink-hued horror but it helps."

"Ok…still wish I'd brought my shades from the car," Dean murmured.

"Makes both of us," Sam turned the sound up slightly on the TV as one team suddenly seemed to come to life a bit.

As Sam did so, Dean knelt one knee on the edge of the bed but before Sam could warn him about it, the mattress simply sank like a stone under the weight and with a startled _yip_ Dean pitched forward sharply, flailing futilely to regain his balance – both yelped as their foreheads smacked together with a loud, teeth-rattling _clonk! _and Dean landed on top of Sam.

Entangled, both flailed and scrabbled, swearing furiously, to get _up_ and _off_ but there was just nothing solid enough to push off against – the mattress simply gave away, almost dissolving under every slight movement like they were in a bottomless pit of candyfloss. The more violently they struggled the more the bed just seemed to fold around them like a giant, suffocating marshmallow.

Thrashing desperately, Dean inadvertently jerked his knee up and his patella smacked into Sam's most vulnerable anatomy -

With a bellow of anguish, Sam instinctively reacted; he blindly shoved Dean in the chest with all his considerable body-strength, and unwittingly some of his mental power, literally throwing him back. Sent tumbling away, Dean felt his hand sink into the mattress like it was warm dough – then slip into empty air – _the edge_.

Using the momentum of Sam's violent shove to help him and unaware of the psychic boost given to Sam's muscles, Dean continued his roll and tumbled off the bed to land with a loud thud on the floor. Without the weight of both of them on the bed, the mattress rose back up slightly and Sam was also able to roll himself off the bed onto the floor his side.

For several minutes the TV played on over the sound of their laboured breathing; Dean rubbed his sore forehead with his palm and Sam knelt at the side of the bed pressing the palm of one hand over his most essential masculine anatomy, now throbbing for all the _wrong _reasons.

Finally straightening up and _very _gingerly getting to his feet, Sam shuffled over to the hideous but oversized baby-pink _chaise longue _in the baby window and eased himself down onto its overstuffed, firmly solid seat with a finality that told Dean which of them alone would have the 'pleasure' of a night spent in the man-eating marshmallow bed. The irony that _he _would be spending the night sleeping between ruby silk sheets was not lost on Dean.

Sam's eyes narrowed and he snorted angrily. "Would you believe…come look at this."

Feeling the heat from various bruises where Sam's flailing limbs had whacked him – and where he'd whacked himself, Dean went round the bottom of the bed – the lower point of the heart-shape, to stand next to the couch. "What am I looking at?"

"Sit on the end and look at the bed," Sam advised, drawing up his knees slightly so Dean could perch on the end of the couch. "See…?"

Dean looked at the bed again; from this angle he could see what Sam meant. The bed was not only heart-shaped but slightly oyster-shaped – from the outer edge for about a foot or so inwards the mattress was very slightly higher than it was in the middle, forming a slight concave outline, a very shallow 'basin' that was imperceptible unless you were looking at the bed – and who wanted to look at anything in this room – from the right angle.

"Aunt Eliza strikes again," Sam theorised. "Probably intended to gently ease the two lovebirds into the middle of the mattress so they could snuggle all night."

"At this rate I'm thinking we should stick around long enough to meet her and throw holy water in her face," groused Dean, "just to make sure."

Sam's response was cut off by a knock on the door and they suddenly caught some familiar, mouth-watering smells. Hastily Dean trotted over to the door and opened it, backing up so Pete, bless him, could wheel a room service cart inside. Moving more carefully, as certain parts were still hurting a lot, Sam also sat up on the couch. Two bottles of beer, condensation running down the outside were duly on the tray; there were two long subs stuffed with hot, juicy steak, mushrooms and fried onions, two large bowls of crisp, golden fries and a bowl of side salad.

"Hi, I hope this is ok," Pete stood back as Dean stepped forward and helped to manoeuvre the cart – his zombie get-up consisted of thickly caked on layers of make-up and some sort of gunged-up suit that clearly made moving about difficult without being clumsy.

"It's great, you didn't have to go to this much trouble," Sam praised, impressed.

"No trouble - we got five extra chefs in yesterday and today to prepare the hot and cold buffets, so it wasn't a problem to just take a little of was there." Pete indicated the lower shelf, where there was a large silver-coloured flask, two big mugs, a bowl of sugar and a jug of milk, "I can only let you have the food and one beer each _gratis_, but if you want later there's a pot of fresh hot coffee."

"Thanks, Pete," Dean said sincerely. "Go enjoy the party – I hope you win, man."

Pete chuckled. "I'm confident – to be honest, my main competition is the Kacick brothers and they're distracted by exam finals so…"

"They usually pull out the stops, huh?" Dean popped a fry into his mouth – perfection; Pete had even put salt, pepper and condiments on the tray for them too.

"It's the fascination factor," Pete revealed. "About twenty-two, twenty-three years back Mrs Kacick had to go to Boston to have an operation because at first she couldn't have kids – it was a fifty-fifty success chance deal. Nothing happened for a while then she gets a bun in the oven. Back to Boston and they come home shell-shocked because Mrs K is not just carrying triplets but triplets all sharing one placenta."

"Identical, one embryo dividing into three." Sam informed Dean at his questioning glance. "It's rare but it does happen."

"They usually all come dressed on the same theme, you know – one'll be Athos, the second Porthos and the third Aramis, the Three Musketeers," Pete told them. "It gives them an edge, but I'm hopeful. Enjoy this while it's hot and I'll come back in an hour or so to collect the cart."

_Continued in Chapter 7…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	7. Chapter 7

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 7**

"Oh man," Dean sighed with lustful wistfulness.

Nibbling on the last couple of now-cold fries, Sam carefully shifted on the couch; his balls still felt a bit tender but nothing compared to the initial eye-watering agony of his brother's kneecap colliding with them. Accurately interpreting the lascivious expression on Dean's face as his older brother stood in the suite's bay window, rubber-necking down into the car lot area below, he jibed, "Does she at least look legal?"

"Xena, warrior princess," Dean informed his brother without looking around, still eyeballing the vision below. "For that, I'd risk it."

"You _do_ realise the character went lesbo, big time?"

"Oh yeah…" Dean's dreamy smirk was downright filthy.

Sam sometimes worried that he was missing or suppressing some important bit of Y-chromosome, because for the life of him he had _never _understood why so many _guys _got all hot for girl-on-girl action when, by definition, girls _into_ girl-on-girl action had _no_ sexual interest in _men_.

"At least she's shown some originality," he pointed out, as there had already been (according to Dean) two Brides of Frankenstein and either two Elvira-Mistress-of-the-Darks or one Elvira and either Morticia Addams or Lily Munster, plus three women in redheaded wigs who Dean surmised were meant to be 'that Queen Elizabeth chick' of England.

Standing up, Sam gave his greasy fingertips a quick wipe on a paper napkin and finished his last swallow of coffee before picking up his own backpack. "You need the bathroom before I go in?"

"Nah, I'm good…" Dean suddenly craned his neck. "Hello…one van, three guys…mayhap the Brothers Kacick?"

Pausing, Sam was curious enough to come and have a sneak peek also. The van pulled into the hotel's lot right on the corner, and the main doors into the lobby were round the other side of the building so it was difficult to get a good look at them. Nonetheless, three large, muscular young males did exit the van, all of the same height and build and dressed, respectively, as a scarecrow, tin man, and a lion.

"Yahtzee," Dean commented, remembering Pete's 'same theme' comment.

"I still think Pete's got the edge," Sam gave his opinion; after all the other man had – even if only momentarily – fooled the Winchester brothers.

"Yeah, I – ouch, look at that – paunch and bald spot don't exactly gel with Count Dracula. Gotta be the bank manager or mayor," Dean declared as a clearly middle-aged man clambered far from nimbly out of a small car clad in the clichéd _Hammer House of Horror_ costume.

Sam wasn't enthused, since they'd only recently had to take out that deranged and delusional shapeshifter who'd thought he really _was _Transylvania's most famous export – as well as a werewolf, a homicidal mummy and Dr Frankenstein. Still, it had almost been worth it for the 'little brother' blackmail potential of seeing Dean in _lederhosen _(and he suspected Dean had very firmly avoided thinking about how 'Drac' had got his unconscious ass _out_ of his fake Fed suit _into_ the lederhosen costume when Dean, customarily, went 'commando' as part of his minimalist approach to laundry – the less he wore, the less he had to wash)…

Assuming his and Dean's relationship survived the current emotional crap to get back to that affectionate sibling sniping. Assuming he and Dean survived the current crap _period_…

"How you figure the bank manager or the mayor?" he asked without real interest, not wanting the pause to become significant and therefore awkward.

"Classic case of bureaucrat's butt," Dean nodded.

"I see that." The cape and the darkness made things a bit indistinct but Sam could see what Dean meant as the man made to walk around to the main entrance. Pen pushers and desk-warmers tended to have shapeless, fat and flabby asses, unlike more a active person's sculpted gluteus maximus.

Skirting round the end of the bed, Sam went into the bathroom. Whatever his faults – and they were called Legion, because they were many – Dean wasn't one of those jerks who left a bathroom looking like downtown Baghdad after the 'shock and awe' and expected other people to clear up after him.

Sam took a moment to appreciate the extra-large, double-wide bathtub, which rightfully dominated the room and was a splendid sight after an eternity of motel bathrooms apparently designed solely for the use of anorexic dwarves; it was an unexpected luxury in a life geared to quick wash-off-the-monster-gunk showers. Quick showers but thorough showers, mind you - when you spent something like twenty-three hours out of twenty-four in close quarters with someone, like him and Dean did, rigorous attention to personal hygiene was the order of the day.

Turning on the taps and adjusting the water temperature, he looked dubiously at the jars of stuff on the wall-shelf, which Dean didn't look to have touched. Both he and Dean went through skin lotion and moisturiser like it would run out tomorrow, but vanity and 'metrosexuality' had nothing to do with it. Hunting injuries and scars could 'go bad' if you weren't careful, 'healing' into thick ridges or knots of scar tissue that limited motion and decreased flexibility. The last thing a hunter could afford was decreased mobility and hindered reflexes because that often turned into the _last thing_ the hunter had.

Given that they had probably been 'provided' by dear old Auntie 'Liza, he decided to err on the side of caution and ignore the jars as Dean apparently had. He stepped into the bath and carefully lowered himself down, hissing as the hot water made his skin tingle and his balls prickle warningly from where Dean's wild flailing and his own had whacked him. A mattress that soft was great for the first night, then the backache kicked in big style until you felt like someone had been tap-dancing on your kidneys with stilettos dipped in acid.

He smiled as he was able to stretch out fully his arms and legs in the water, and indulged in a five minute soak; these days he always seemed to be angry with Dean or hurt by Dean or be resentful of Dean, and he consciously willed away the tension and stress – for once they weren't bedding down at Cockroach Central and he didn't want to spoil the tentative accord that currently seemed to be prevailing.

Although, come on Sam, he mentally prodded himself, he did have to take a big lump of the blame here, and a lot of his and Dean's current conflict had nothing to do with Dean's ire over Sam letting Ruby seduce him both sexually and into regularly using his powers, or his anger at Sam's stubborn persistence in exercising his abilities or the fact that since Ruby had yanked the tiger's tail, Sam seemed determined to frequently devour her. A lot of it was basically because Sam was quite a bit jealous.

Sam lathered up as the water began to cool, acknowledging that he was a bit spoiled; he'd grown up effectively the only child of a father and a brother who doted on him and Jessica had thought the world of him. In his mind Sam had always known his rightful place in Dean's life and to him that place had been simply: 'first'. Until Castiel showed up with his over-gelled hair and diffident stance and uncertain expression and soulful eyes and Dean had gone all 'protective'. Castiel had Uriel around for the heavy lifting!

Even Ruby had called him on his attitude. After Anna's grace had been restored, Ruby had simply taken herself off alone acting as if the slices Alistair had made across her belly with that damn knife were just grazes. At the time, Sam no choice but to let her go, as he had another crisis to cope with: Dean's meltdown as he confessed that Alistair had broken him, that he had tortured alongside the creature.

There had been nothing Sam could do or say to comfort Dean and he hadn't insulted him with platitudes, just hooked his arm around his brother's neck and held him close whilst Dean managed to regain some semblance of composure. They'd gone back to their motel and Dean had crawled into his bed and been asleep in moments, not rested, but simply too physically drained to remain awake.

Too wound up to sleep, Sam had made sure the room was secure against human and supernatural intruders, then gone the four blocks to Ruby's motel, breaking in with a simple credit card swipe down the door when his ear against the door conducted nothing but worrisome silence, but though the room was empty, the en suite shower was running behind a firmly closed bathroom door, despite her being the room's sole occupant. He'd called out to her to let him help with First Aid. Her response had been dismissive. But he'd persisted, needing to know about how much time Dean really had spent in…and they'd ended up having a stop-start conversation through the door.

Quickly washing his hair, Sam dunked it under the water and then ran the taps afresh even as he pulled the plug and let the water drain away to rinse off. He should have realised then there was something Ruby had never intended him to see but at the time he'd hardly been at his best; Dean's suffering had tormented him, it still did. However, Ruby had confirmed that 'one month topside' equated to about a decade downstairs…which meant Dad had spent a century in hell.

Then and now, Sam veered from that thought, going back to what she had also told him - that Dean had nothing to be ashamed of; most people, 'including me, who folded like I was origami' lasted an hour, tops. Holding out for anything close to thirty years was…epic, the stuff of legend.

That had led onto discussion of Anna (and how could Dean criticise _Sam_ for choosing non-human bed partners?!) and Castiel, at which point Ruby had deigned to open the door slightly and stick her head round and accuse him of being jealous of Dean's regard for Castiel.

_Continued in Chapter 8…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	8. Chapter 8

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 8**

Sam towelled himself dry vigorously and wiped around the bath, acknowledged that Ruby had been bang on the nail…

"_Sam, the main reason you're so down on Castiel is because he's using all your baby bro' moves to engage Dean's attention," she raised both eyebrows at him, steam puffing around where she had stuck her head around the door._

"_I don't have any baby-bro' moves!"_

"_Oh puhleese. You want a few - the don't-you-like-me expression, check; the woebegone countenance, check; the lost-puppy soulful gaze, check –"_

"_I've never looked like a lost puppy!" he spluttered._

"_Are you kidding, it's your default expression on any day of the week with a 'y' in it. And I'm not surprised – Castiel is one of the brainiest boxes up there where the air is rare and every cloud has an orchestra practising on it. I knew he was too intelligent to reinvent the wheel when all he needed to do to engage Dean was co-opt the tactics of the one person who had always been the centre of Dean's life."_

"_I'm – " Sam cut off the lie; he had always been the focal point of Dean's existence and he liked it like that; he didn't want this interloper taking Dean's attention away from him. "I'm like a spoiled toddler, aren't I?"_

"_Is that a rhetorical question or do you **really **want me to answer that?"_

_Which was answer enough. "I've always been possessive about what I think are my things," Sam admitted, "My toys, my dad, Dean…"_

"_You don't say?" she shot back at him with scant sympathy and archly pointed intonation, before withdrawing back into the bathroom and shutting the door, leaving him feeling alone and foolish. _

_He winced, knowing what her sarcasm referred back to – that time he'd spotted her going into a bar and followed; she hadn't know he was there and it wouldn't have made any difference if she had, she was hunting and had no time for ego massaging, but he'd followed her and helped her kill the chomp thing, in, of all places, a sports equipment store - and then he'd ruthlessly pushed her flat on her back on a large pool table, taking her roughly even as he continued stripping her clothing, deliberately marking her skin with bruising love bites on every place where the overenthusiastic chancers had risked a quick grab and grope, before taking her again with a snarled interdiction that she did not allow anyone to touch her except him._

_Aware that she was right about his downer on Castiel, he could not leave without apologising to her, even though she would wave it off dismissively, as she always did. Letting himself into the bathroom he had –_

_Whore._

Sam grit his teeth as he pulled on his fresh pair of jeans, T-shirt and hoodie, rolling the old clothing up into carryall for later laundry. Ruby had whipped around like a whirling dervish, but not fast enough for him _not_ to see the word, clearly sliced with something like a razor, cut into the bottom of her back, in the same place where some women had those 'tramp stamp' tattoos done. There was no way she could treat the injury herself and Alistair had known it.

Sam shook his head, trying to clear away the anger and distress that he had so nearly managed to ease away from, suppressing the impulse to stick his own head around the bathroom door and fill Dean in on what Ruby had suffered in order to get their little Godzilla versus Mothra plan to work. He didn't because Ruby had vowed in all seriousness to cut out his tongue if he told anyone – specifically Dean or Castiel.

"_Sam, it's no biggie," Ruby snapped impatiently. "To be honest, I knew going in that he would probably do this – the old 'double standards' exist in the pit as well as up here – male demons act like man-sluts and they're practically heroes, but if a she-devil is unashamedly frisky and proud of it, they come at you all 'old time religion' if you get my drift."_

"_Ruby – "_

_She cut him off. "Sam, get over it, like I said, I knew before I agreed to your little scheme that it would happen - Alistair is über-evil, but not that imaginative or original. I'll admit, I was hoping for 'slut' – not as many letters, or even that he'd gone totally Valley Girl and knew what a 'ho' was. Still, he could have decided on 'hooker' which is two letters longer than 'whore' or – "_

Sam had cut off the flow by placing his hand over her mouth and her nervous chatter had ceased. He'd insisted on tending to the cuts, which, mercifully being so close to the spine of her body, were very superficial. Normally naked Ruby, and naked Ruby with her plump ass so close to his groin, would have resulted in her being spread underneath him and ridden hard in short order, but he had felt no lust at all, only a desire to wrap his arms round her and cuddle her and hold her until she went to sleep, in exactly the same way as he had sat next to Dean for a good half hour earlier that night, watching his brother sleep, pulling the cover up around him and gently brushing back Dean's hair as if his brother was the younger sibling.

He had stayed until she pulled on a baggy T-shirt and got into the motel bed, and what had _cut him_ was the gratitude she hadn't been able to hide in her eyes when he softly told her goodnight and headed for the door, gratitude that he hadn't tried to instigate sex. It had brought home to him afresh what an absolute 'prince' he must have been in those first few weeks after Ruby had 'seduced' him, if she thought that her being tortured and slashed would make no difference to his decision to take what he wanted. How had the Trickster not been drawn to 'dickness' on such a scale?

Besides, the plain though unpalatable truth was that there was one way in which he simply could not compete against Castiel in rivalry for his brother's affection. Castiel had done what no _person _could have – he had saved Dean.

In a way, he had to appreciate the undoubted 'cosmic irony' that had to be lurking somewhere. An angel had saved Dean from Hell, and Dean had been bedded by an angel – and it was definitely _been _– for all Dean's tomcatting around there had been no way he was in charge or control of anything that Anna had decided to do that night; Dean had been the seduced, not the seducer. A demon had saved _him _from putting himself in Hell with Dean, and he'd been bedded by a demon, and now he realised there was no way he had been in charge or control anything that Ruby had decided to do that night.

Either some very disturbing synchronicity was at work, or else it was the biggest coincidence in the history of the cosmos. And the Winchester position on the theory of coincidences was well known.

Firmly Sam switched off his inner brooding button, determined to not ruin his own or Dean's mood with wallowing in the misery. He'd done enough of that already this week alone.

He could skip shaving tonight so he rubbed his hair dry and back combed it, deciding to let it dry on its own, tidying up the bathroom altogether and putting the towels to dry. Hearing a loud knock and the sound of Dean moving across the room, Sam went back out just as Pete lurched in, his face contorted into a hideous rictus that sent Sam to Hunter DefCon 3 before he realised just in time that it was actually a cheerful grin.

On top of that, it had to be _hot_ down in the hotel's main ballroom with all those bodies and some patches of Pete's make-up had started to 'run', giving the costume a sort of gooey/melted look of semi-squishy putrid flesh. Now standing behind Pete as he had opened the room door to let him in, Dean rolled his eyes at Sam.

"Dinner was awesome," Sam thanked Pete, helping put their crockery back on the room service cart. "What's it like down there?"

"Hot, loud and _great_," Pete enthused. "You should _see_ Zöe Wanaceyk – she came as _Xena_."

"Hot, huh?" Dean smirked at Sam over Pete's shoulder, ignoring his brother's eye-rolling byplay that Pete missed.

"Scorching. She's six foot tall and _stacked_."

On Dean, an expression of drooling lasciviousness had been unpleasant; on a guy dressed up as a zombie it only added to the gross-out factor. Sam shot Dean a _stop encouraging him_ look, which only caused Dean's grin to widen shark-like. Terrific.

Sam snapped back into it as Pete suddenly yelled and dropped the coffee flask that Sam had fortunately tightened the lid back on properly. Though surprised, Sam reflexively caught it in his hands as Pete doubled up with another cry.

"Pete?!" Sam dumped the flask on the cart, moving forward along with Dean in alarm.

"Uh-uh-_uh_," Pete moaned rapidly, clutching his stomach as if he'd been kicked violently by an invisible assailant.

"What's with him?" Dean hovered, not wanting to grab Pete or try and get him sat down if it made things worse.

"No clue!" protested Sam, trying desperately to recall anything he could remember about appendicitis, gallstones, kidney stones and the like. "Let's –"

Pete gave another loud groan and abruptly crumpled face down on the carpet.

"Crap. Get that cart out of the way," Sam appealed.

Dean sent the cart clear with a one-handed shove as Sam knelt beside Pete. He peeled a little of the make-up of Pete's neck and pressed two fingers down, waiting a moment then pressing down harder. Dean watched as Sam's face paled and his younger brother then reached down and repeated the action against Pete's wrist, before laying both his hands against Pete's chest – which wasn't moving.

Shock leached Sam's eyes of colour to the point they were almost silver as they met Dean's. "He's _dead_."

_Continued in Chapter 9…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	9. Chapter 9

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 9**

Dean didn't insult Sam by indulging in momentary protest or denial or are-you-sure banality. In death, a human body had an unmistakable stillness that other humans instinctively recognised - even if someone died peacefully in their sleep aged 95 surrounded by porcine, inheritance-hungry grandkids. Absence of life, even in the most serene circumstances, was _indescribable_ but unfailingly _recognisable_.

"We need to know what killed him, and fast – 'cause if it was _food_ poisoning we are _screwed_." Dean warned.

"Heatstroke?" Sam threw in the wildcard suggestion. "We need to get this gunk off him – _ooh_."

Sam recoiled as his nose wrinkled at a sudden bad smell, and an instant later Dean also leaned back in distaste. "Whoa, dude were you scoffing some secret stash of burritos while you were in the tub? You know they turn you into a poison gas factory - _Ack_."

Sam couldn't retort to the jibe because that would have required breathing in and no way was he going to do that.

Another second and Sam's eyes were watering and Dean was choked as the bad smell ramped it up instantly into putrid _stench_. Both stood back upright rapidly, coughing and blinking to clear their eyes against the vile stink.

" – let off a smoke bomb!" Dean gasped, fighting not to gag or breathe any deeper than the most shallow of inhalations, Sam doing likewise.

And Pete groaned and twitched.

"You said he was _dead_!" croaked Dean accusingly

"He is! He was!" Sam protested in a rasp as he tried to breathe shallowly as well; he might have missed the carotid but not that _and_ the pulse _and_ total absence of respiration. "Pete? Pete? Can you hear me?"

Apparently not; Pete merely groaned and twitched and groaned again. Belatedly Sam realised the horrible reek was coming from underneath Pete – had the guy been intending some prank and ended up breaking half-a-dozen 'stink-bombs' when he'd collapsed by landing on them?

"You've been taken ill, you fainted," Sam tried again as Pete slowly began to make vague 'swimming' motions with his limbs and move more rapidly.

Pete rolled to one side and lumbered to his feet, swaying slightly and looking, no pun intended, seriously ill – his face, mashed against the carpet, had smeared his make-up completely and incongruously he had now bright fuschia-pink fibres stuck all over his face.

"Take it easy," Sam cautioned, making ready to steady the other if he fell again.

Pete swiped out at Sam's outstretched arm with a low, inarticulate moan.

"Hey!"

Again, Pete swayed and made a swipe to grab Sam's arm, this time stumbling forward a step and making another grab.

Sam took a step back, his eyes widening; Pete made another low moaning sound, but his mouth didn't move, as if the sound were just air moving through his rotting chest cavity, like the faint swish of an automatic door. One of his teeth dropped out onto the carpet but Pete never flinched and his eyelids were half-shut and somehow sunken into his eye sockets. Despite barely being able to stand, Pete swayed another step forward, his focus solely and now frighteningly on Sam, his lower jaw twitching in a way that had no correlation to the movement of his upper face.

"Uh, _Dean_…" Sam's eyes met his brother's and yes, they were on the same page – Pete had not landed on and crushed a load of stink-bombs prepared for some frat boy prank. Pete _was _the stink because he was no longer a man dressed as a zombie. He _was_ a zombie.

"The gear's in the car!" Dean cursed himself, his fingers curling round his favoured Colt, which was usually the handgun he always wore in back of his waistband under whatever jacket and over-shirt.

But then he let loose; he alternated the clip with silver and iron bullets, both of which might slow a zombie down for a minute, but wouldn't stop it – _that _required the vampire/rougarou combo special – first you decapitated your fugly, then you burned the head, which would instantly de-animate the body and reduce it to a pile of rotting meat.

Besides, Pete was so rotted and squishy and full of holes that if he fired off a round it would pass through the slushy corpse like tissue paper and slam at high velocity into what was directly the other side of it – Sam; specifically his chest near the heart. Unlike the rock salt loads of their shotguns which disintegrated on impact and only caused angst and red welts (at least to human beings), being hit centre-mass by a silver or iron bullet would kill Sam just as much as a garden-variety lead projectile.

Easily Sam read the realisations and frustration as they flitted across Dean's face, like reading the morning newspaper. Sam stood another step back, feeling his shoulder blades connect with the bathroom door, which swung half-an-inch inwards as he had not closed it fully when he'd returned to the bedroom. Which gave him an idea -

"New plan," he announced. "Hey, come on, Petey, come get the juicy man meat!"

The words were incomprehensible to the zombie-formerly-known-as; its brain was gruel at this point in decomposition, but it was wholly consumed by the hunger to sustain itself in its reanimated existence by devouring raw human flesh, so it lumbered forward again with the focus of an ICBM.

With the palm of his hand, Sam shoved the bathroom door wide open to give himself room, and, one step at a time, backed into the large sybaritic bathroom, wincing as Pete 'squelched' slightly on the tiles. Gross. Fortunately a platoon could come in here and dance the can-can without bumping up against the sink, bath, etc., which was what he needed – manoeuvring room.

Using the massive wall-mirror to keep track of what was behind him so he could tell how near he was getting to the edge of the bathtub (toppling back into it was _not _a key feature of this plan), Sam kept encouraging Pete to come forward. Trying not to breath too deeply – or at all, really – he let Pete shuffle closer and then, as late as he could, Sam simply copied Pete's earlier move and crumpled to the floor like a puppet with the strings just snipped. Unlike Pete he rolled up his long tall body as small as he could and just rolled/tumbled underneath the zombie's outstretched arm until he was behind it, then scrambled to his feet, scuttled to the door and hopped back into the main bedroom suite shutting it firmly behind him.

Pete was incapable of figuring out the door, despite it being a simple twist of the knob and only locking from the inside, but best be safe than sorry. Sam's eyes lit on the bedclothes. "Dean, that lace edging -"

Dean grinned an evil, happy grin. "Nice one, Sammy." With epic relish he grabbed the end where the lace edge was attached to the bedclothes and ripped it away from the silk with glee.

They tied the long strips of lace around the bathroom doorknob at one end, then pulled it taut and tied the other around the headboard post nearest the door. In the almost impossible scenario that Pete managed to turn the door handle, even if accidentally, he would still be contained.

"Now we get our gear and stop whatever the hell is goin' on," growled Dean, finally pulling out his Colt from his waistband.

"Dean, listen…"

Dean cocked his slightly as he did so, and he met Sam's equally grim look with one of his own. All night the sounds of revelry had carried up to them in faint, infrequent snatches of laughter and song and applause. Now the sounds were loud and constant - screams and yells and crashes. "Sounds like our little _ménage a trios _up here isn't as much as a _private _party as we'd hoped."

_Continued in Chapter 10…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	10. Chapter 10

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 10**

They left the room, Sam making sure the door was firmly shut as an added 'pen Pete inside' precaution. Guns ready, they walked cautiously along the main corridor, which was silent, all the room doors definitely closed, and completely ignoring the elevator almost next to their room that Pete had brought them up on.

Hunters did not like confined spaces – unless they were doing the confining. Besides, there was no way to know beforehand what would be there when the elevator doors opened or being able to re-close them in time should the fugly _du jour_ happen to be looking the right way – or wrong way, depending on your viewpoint – when they arrived in the lobby. Having said bad thing manage to force its way into the small space where the hunters had trapped themselves was not part of any sound game plan, even before you factored in the potential for some bastard-lovechild-of-Freddy-Krueger-n-Edward-Scissorhands to simply shred the cables and send the impromptu coffin plunging to the basement.

The stairs weren't epic anyway; despite the building's height there were only three storeys since the rooms were spacious with high ceilings. Dean craned his neck down the curving staircase to the second floor, but nothing lurked. Quickly they made their way down; the stairs formed the top spur of a lower-case 't' shape, with one corridor stretching along left to right across the bottom and a second corridor stretching out directly in front like the long stroke of the 't' until curved left around the corner out of sight at the far end.

"Straight on down the long corridor, the stairs are there," Sam advised.

"How come you know?" Dean asked even as he began to move forward.

"It was on the information poster in the elevator when Pete brought us up to the room."

"What information poster?"

Rolling his eyes slightly, Sam explained, "The hotel would have been bankrupted if it had had to comply with building regs and remodelled to make all the staircases follow consecutively instead of being at alternate ends of each floor, but they got round it because each floor is laid out on a sort of grid-shape which means that no room is more than a thirty-second run from a stairwell in case of evacuation."

"Could you _be _any more super-geek?"

"_You _wanted to be the fireman."

Whatever riposte Dean would have made was lost forever; both spun round as a hideous shriek and a colossal din sounded suddenly far too close – and it was heading definitely in their direction.

"Uh, I think –" began Sam nervously.

Fortunately they were still at the far end of the long corridor, at the bottom of the stairs they'd just walked down, otherwise they wouldn't have had time as none other than the Wicked Witch of the West, literally flying a broomstick, came swooping around the corner at waist-height.

Or rather, a witch and a broomstick that happened to be sharing the same space at the same time; the witch was wailing in pure terror, her hands jerking desperately at the broom handle as she hurtled towards them. Abruptly half the bristles were snapped off as the broom whacked the corridor wall and it half-spun violently left; her head hit the wall with a solid crack and she fell off. Unable to do anything else Dean and Sam threw themselves flat on the carpet and the broom collided with the wall behind them; the broom handle snapped in half as loud as a rifle shot and it collapsed, inert, to the carpet.

Carefully they stood back up; the witch remained unmoving in crumpled heap of billowing black cloth, which in itself meant nothing; they had ventilated a Shtriga like a sieve and it had still bounced back up. Cautiously, with Dean a step behind covering him, Sam knelt one knee next to the witch. Since finding the radial pulse was much easier than the carotid on most people, he held her wrist and found the rhythm was rapid but slowing. He pressed against her head but the tall, black pointed hat, now a squashed, flattened mess, appeared to have absorbed most of the impact.

"She's alive, just knocked cold. I think she'll be okay." He told Dean.

"Let me check something." Dean moved beside him, then pulled up one black velvet sleeve to show an expanse of pink-white forearm, which ended at wrist where the flesh became a lurid green hue. Pulling down the collar of her black velvet dress slightly Dean was again greeted by healthy pink flesh in contrast to the lurid green of her throat and face. He brushed his fingers against her neck from the green to pink skin.

Sam was on the same page, "The green isn't just make-up any more."

They were two for two in the 'Joe Average' transformed into 'supernatural freak' category. Since she was out for the count and there was nothing they could do for her at this point, they moved very cautiously on along the corridor, but encountered no more surprises as they rounded the corner. Making their way along the corridor they reached the landing intersection; another corridor stretched off to their left and the stairs led down into the lobby, or you could walk across the landing above the lobby and the corridor continued on curving to the right to disappear through a pair of double doors. Most of the din was coming from beyond the double doors.

Dean ventured a few steps down the stairs and then back up, "Lobby's clear," he reported. "Though I bet you go down and through those doors past the reception desk and you're in the ballroom."

"I'd say there was another exit by a flight of stairs leading up and out the hotel ballroom through that pair off doors on the opposite landing." Sam nodded at them.

"Makes sense, rather than have folks trooping through the lobby all the time to get to their rooms while you're trying to check people in and out." Dean shrugged. "So let's go by the landing –"

"- Lobby -"

Dean glared, "I said landing first so –"

"_Dean_. Go. Down. Into. The. Lobby."

Freaky demonic super-powers or not Samuel Winchester did not get to order his older, cuter, sexier brother around anytime in this universe. "We're going –"

Sam looked at him squarely, his voice very calm and measured. "Dean, I need you to move very, very slowly and go down the stairs into the lobby. Right now. _Please_."

Sammy wasn't jerking his chain, nor jerking around.

"Wha-? _Ooh crap._"

Behind and past Sam, at the far end of the long corridor to their left, had appeared an animal. It was large and yellow-furred, but unfortunately was definitely not an obese Labrador. It had a mane, and big yellow-orange eyes far too reminiscent of Azazel.

"Guess it's too much to hope he's still a _cowardly _lion?"

_Continued in Chapter 11…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note – **the question has been asked, and the answer is, no, I wrote the whole 'James Stewart'/It's a Wonderful Life analogy from Sam's perspective back in Chapter 5 of this story before any sides/title for the episode 'It's a Terrible Life' became known to any fans; yes, it is just coincidence and I have no doubt the episode will be hugely funnier than anything I could come up with – (I've seen the promo clips -what is it with Jared and his penchant for wearing pretty pastels?!)

HAVING A BALL

**Chapter 11**

"Maybe he's not that hungry," Sam tried.

"Oh yeah, and how often have you attended some party where the finger buffet won't fill up a starving sparrow and you can't stop thinking about a big plate of Smokey Joe's Ribs Special?" Dean shot back. "He's looking at you through the eyes of a kitty cat jonesing from a serious snack-attack. There's enough on you to keep him going for a week once he starts gnawing on those freakishly long bones."

"Have you _finished_?"

"I don't suppose there's any chance the clip you've got in _your _Taurus* is only loaded with rock salt?"

"Twenty-four karat silver plating over consecrated iron, hand-cast in a crossroad's forge, cold washed in holy water, polished with cloths made from a priest's surplice." Sam recited, _almost_ apologetically.

"You're _kidding_," even in the face of death-by-lion Dean was unable to _not_ respond to that litany.

"What can I say – compulsive overachiever. But, yeah, shooting him's out of the question."

"We may have no choice, here." Dean Winchester only _actively _hunted for two things – evil and food; but if it was a choice between Sam and the Kacick Triplet, Mr & Mrs were about to become the parents of _twins_.

"Do you think we have any chance of being fast enough to run down into the lobby and get into the elevator before he can?"

_If _the elevator happened to be in the lobby so the doors opened immediately when they pressed 'call' and _if _they could jump inside and shut said doors before the lion also reached it and _if _the elevator didn't have one of those inconvenient modern safety features which made the doors automatically open again when a rushing person – or hungry lion – shoved a limb in the gap so they could enter too.

"Nope."

"We have to come up with plan, Dean. I _can't _shoot him."

_I can_; but then it impinged properly on Dean what was just behind Sam. They were standing more or less straight in front of one of the room doors – the first one on the second floor landing coming up the staircase from the lobby. "Wait…"

"New plan?"

"_Same _plan. Are your lock-picking skills good enough to make you the fastest B&E guy in the west?"

Sam was unsure of Dean's game plan, but was willing to try it. "Something tells me we're about to find out definitively."

"Move – _veeeery _slowly – and pick the lock on this door, while I distract Leo the Unfriendly lion. And Sam – the word of the day is 'fast'."

Sliding his gun back into his waistband and easing his miniature locksmith kit out of his pocket, Sam sort of sidled slightly and crouched down to the lock, acutely aware that he had now had his back to hungry, fanged-death…_again_. Dean sort of casually stepped in front of him, facing the lion and hunching/swelling his shoulders and arms out in a sort of bastard gorilla/bodybuilder pose to make himself look bigger.

The lion had no care if dinner chose to just stand there and wait for it; it neither understood nor cared when it's dinner turned away from it. But it _did _recognise another predator when it saw one, and now the Other had moved between it and its meal and had adopted a challenging posture.

_Snnnnnnnarrrrl_.

Not even for a split-second did Sam turn his head, look up or divert his total focus from what he was doing; he didn't need to. "_Dean_, what are you _doing_?"

"Just keep working on that lock. I saw this on Discovery Channel – or that David Attenborough dude. Whichever, if you make yourself look really big it's possible the other animal might back off because it thinks it can't win."

"_Might _back off…and what's the _other _outcome to this genius plan if the other animal _doesn't _pick Door Number One?"

"…Just get the door open, Sammy."

"That's what I _thought_." Sam could feel beads of sweat making his eyebrows itch and was glad he now customarily back-combed his fringe; wiping his forehead to waft the hair from his eyes would break his concentration and take vital micro-seconds they just did not have, if the low rumbling growl-snarls were any indication, now that Dean had royally pissed off the king of beasts.

"Saaam…" Dean inflated his cheeks and tried to make his comedy gorilla impression even bigger, but Leo's tail simply lashed from side to side and it took two paces forward, to Dean clearly measuring the clearance between it and what it intended to shred.

_CLICK. _

Not even Zeppelin could produce anything as sweet as that sound. Dean felt the air pressure change behind him as Sam, not needing a verbal cue, eased a couple of steps down the stairs, by now having figured out this was a variation on his own theme of 'trap Pete in the bathroom'.

"GIT!" barked Dean. "G'WAN!"

With dinner disappearing from sight, this loud insult was a bridge too far. Dean didn't even have time to swear as the lion went from a standing start to a full on charge in the blink of an eye and launched itself forward and up, straight at Dean's throat. What saved him were his own superb reflexes, and the fact that he moved as soon as the lion did.

Instead of ducking or dropping to the floor, which would have put him in the path of the lion's powerful rear legs and razor-sharp claws, Dean threw himself _back _and _down _to hit the floor inside the open door with a _thwack _that drove the air momentarily from his lungs. Since he was moving away and down, and the lion was moving _forwards _but diagonally _up_, they missed each other like two halves of a book falling open away from each other on a desk – but only just. The lion's tail smacked Dean solidly in the face as its leap saw its rear-leg claws skim through the hair on the top of his head as it overshot, unable to correct its momentum; it landed on the bed near the left-side edge and crashed to the floor in a melee of pillows and bedclothes.

Sam grabbed the front of Dean's T-shirt and bodily hauled him out of the doorway with just his right hand even as he grabbed the door handle with his left and yanked the door shut as the lion spun around and sprang again with incredible speed. The door clicked shut and locked just as something heavy thudded into it from the other side, making it shake like Jello.

Dean clambered to his feet, rubbing his cheek where he could feel the stinging heat from the tail's whack. The door shuddered again as it was hit by a large and furious feline.

"Do we have any tranks in the car?"

_Now _Sam decided to go all People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? "No. Look, it – he – whatever, will be fine in there until we fix this."

"But –"

"_Sam_, be grateful I didn't just empty my clip into that moving hearthrug."

Sam stiffened. "_I'm_ thinking about the Kacicks. _You _don't know what it's like to lose a brother, Dean."

A sudden surge of anger made Dean flush even more than his exertions of a moment ago – to save his ungrateful whining brother. "You were gone for nearly four years –"

"And you were _dead_ for nearly one." Sam retorted. "And you knew you could find me at Stanford any time; I had to endure the Dean-shaped hole in the world for virtually a whole year –"

Though exasperated at the exaggeration, Dean tried to mollify. "Look, I know those four months when I was…in Hell…must have seemed…"

"Ten, nearly eleven."

"What?"

"The Trickster, Dean." Sam folded his arms across his chest in what Dean recognised as a defensive-protective motion. "Do you remember what happened after we caught the Trickster and it ended its Groundhog Day riff of eternal Tuesdays before it could stake it?"

Irritated at Sam deciding _now _to 'have a moment', Dean retorted impatiently. "Yeah, we finally woke up on Wednesday morning and we split Nowheresville. Where's the trauma?"

"Because _we _didn't split 'Nowheresville'. _You_ went down to the car in the lot from our room. Couple of minutes later I heart a gunshot…I ran down…I found you lying on the ground next to the trunk. You'd been shot dead."

_What?_

As if Dean had exclaimed aloud Sam continued, "Pro'ly some smackhead mugging for fix money. He was never gonna get caught. It took me _six months, _Dean, nearly seven. Of not sleeping, hardly eating – way too much drinking - and following up the tiniest, flimsiest most out-there rumour before the Trickster got tired of the pursuit and let me persuade it to pull the Marty McFly _redux _one last time…For some reason – probably its continued personal amusement – I seem to be the only person who has any memory of when you were _first _dead."

He'd been dead for over six months? And _then_ for another four? Indeed nearly a whole year bar about six weeks… "That's why you didn't do the burn and urn," Dean realised. "It took you six months but you _did _get to the Trickster and you _did _convince it to _Back to the Future _your ass one last time. So when I was in Hell, you thought you could do it again."

"Yeah, I did. I tried. But nobody would deal. Nobody wanted my soul, not even though I was Azazel's supposed puppet and still stocked full of psychic psycho juice. I couldn't bring you back." Sam admitted bitterly, his eyes flickering with clear jealous resentment to Dean's shoulder, where they both knew under the clothing the scarlet brand of Castiel's hand imprint stood proud from his skin.

But it _did _explain, at least a bit, Sam's big jump into bed, figuratively and literally, with Ruby. Trying to find a way to bring Dean would have been part of it, but Sam had already endured half a year of forging a life in a world where his brother was dead; in the aftermath of Dean's _second _death, Sam would not have been as traumatised to the same extent.

Was that why the Trickster had allowed Sam, even if nobody else, the ability to remember that mercifully brief alternate timeline of world-where-Dean-is-dead? Did Tricksters have any sort of precog abilities? Had it been pre-emptively _training _Sam to survive Dean's death?

They were all questions to which there were unlikely to ever be any answers, and right now was _so _not the time or the place. As if to emphasise this fact, there came a horrible scraping sound from the bedroom; both brothers jerked their heads around at the shuddering noise of claws biting deeply into wood.

_Continued in Chapter 12…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

* Author's Note: ErinRua on her excellent website . provides a superb summary of the various weaponry used by "Sam" and "Dean" in the show including photographs of their 'favourite' handguns, namely:

(Dean) the **Colt 1911 A1** .45 calibre semi-automatic 7-round clip capacity. Dean's Colt is a 'tricked out' model with ivory handles and decorative scrollwork engraving (quite the "pimp gun" to quote Ms Rua).

From Season 2 Sam predominantly carries the **Taurus Model 99** 9mm standard with adjustable rear sight and 17-round clip capacity. (Based on the Model 92 10-round capacity without the adjustable sight). To the casual glance the two guns are hard to distinguish because the Taurus has mother-of-pearl handgrip (and the Colt has ivory), but the Taurus lacks the engraving.

For fan-fiction writers who like to be as accurate as possible, ErinRua's site is tremendously helpful – it shows and mentions other guns/weapons used by Sam, Dean, John, etc., such as the noted Glock-17, and how often they have been used or featured in the show.

ErinRua's website is great for a writer who wants to "raise their [writing] game" by including those tiny but accurate extra little details that lend verisimilitude to a story. The website also features close-up photos and explanations of Dean's homemade EMF detector, and the IRTS ('ertz') Infra-Red Thermo Scanner amongst others, though not, for some reason, any mention of the black-light scanner they used to in the Mary Worthington episode.


	12. Chapter 12

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 12**

In the ballroom, Chaos would have reigned, if it hadn't been locked in a death-battle with Mayhem. At least the question of how many of the townsfolk at the ball had been affected was clearly answered: all of them.

Dean and Sam exchanged grim looks as they took in the bedlam from the landing at the top of the stairs, which as they'd surmised was an alternative exit to enable guests to go straight up to their rooms without having go through the lobby. Like the rest of the hotel, the ballroom was wide but also high-ceilinged, essential in any space where you wanted a lot of people to be without them over-heating.

"Crap." Dean spotted the opposite wall – which was comprised of a marching rank of French windows leading out on a broad-paved, stepped-terrace - and all of which were _open_ to a great or lesser degree; even as they watched, a Frankenstein's monster stumbled out into the night. Dean squinted instinctively as he tried to check it out.

"It's okay," Sam told him, relaxing slightly in relief, his greater height and younger eyes enabling him to more easily see, "It's a walled garden – hermetically sealed."

"At – "

"Aaaah! Aaaah!"

Both instinctively turned at the cries; a large middle-aged man was suddenly a few stairs below them; staggering and floundering about. He was dressed in a billowing bright-blue gown liberally festooned with sparkling, sewn-on crescent moons, stars and sunbursts and a similarly decorated, very familiar tall, pointy hat momentarily appeared to defy gravity by sticking out from his head over his right ear, until you saw the elastic strap under his chin.

The problem was the _wand _he clutched in one podgy hand; obviously in a state of panic the 'magician' waved his arms about over his head as he yelped, oblivious to the fact that every waft saw bright coloured sparks and flashes blast from the wand indiscriminately. Dean and Sam reflexively jerked back as a purple star shower hit the wall a foot below the stair Dean was standing on and blew a tennis-ball sized smoking hole in the plasterwork.

Giving an annoyed grunt, Dean let go the grip and used the trigger-guard to spin his Colt around his forefinger, grasping it by the barrel as it smacked into his palm. With one smooth stride he stepped forward and smartly rapped his gun-butt against the guy's head, plucking the wand from his fingers as he slid bonelessly to the floor. With his free hand Dean sharply struck the wand against the wall, snapping it in two with irritated satisfaction. Once again Dean parted his lips to speak but was interrupted.

"VILE IMPOSTER! _I_ am Count Draahk-yula; I will drain you dry and pick my teeth with your bones!" There was no way to know which of the two plump men dressed as the eponymous Transylvanian Count had uttered the threat as they faced off against each other swelling and fluffing up like bantam cocks in mutual outrage.

"You have got to be kidding me," Dean finally got out incredulously.

"It could be worse," Sam tried to commiserate.

"Really..."

"They're just ordinary people, Dean." Sam pointed out. "Imagine, if they _really _knew was out there, in the dark."

For a moment Dean contemplated a vision of coming into a ballroom packed with wendigous, shtrigas, rougarous, chupacubras, reapers, women in white, tulpas, tricksters, vanir, shape-shifters, and _real _vampires. "Good point."

"There's no way we'll find out what's going on if we have to fight our way through this lot," Sam acknowledged, "We – " he broke off, his eyes widening in surprise and alarm as he looked over Dean's shoulder.

Hastily spinning around to meet the new threat Dean hesitated as there _was_ no new threat unless you counted tweedlevamps one and two still facing off over who was the _real _Count Dracula. Following the line of Sam's gaze Dean looked up and –

The ballroom had tall supporting pillars and an actual vaulted ceiling, plainly painted but with ornate coving around the top of the walls and the chandelier brackets. Near the main chandelier – a huge crystal effort that must have weighed in at nearly two tonnes – was a small creature flying around in erratic circles. It had stubby white wings, a white gown of snowy silk overlaid with fine lace, tiny white silk ballet shoes – and a small but bright golden halo of light around its head.

It was also crying, big fat tears rolling down apple-red cheeks. Before, _she_ had been a little girl dressed up as an angel by her doting mommy and daddy for the party; now she _was _an angel.

And she was tiring; Dean didn't need to hear Sam whisper, half to himself, "She's going to fall…"

If what had happened to Pete was representative, then this whole 'let's keep it _real_' deal had happened suddenly and painfully to everyone in here. In the initial panic instinct had probably caused her to be able to fly up, away from the scary and scared big people and mommy and daddy who _weren't _mommy and daddy any more. But flight was a high-energy deal and those little wings might look great on a toddler's costume but were too stubby to be any real good – even in the Bible those Seraphs* each needed six of the suckers. Imminently the little girl was going to drop like a brick from a height of about thirty feet.

Dean vaulted the staircase balustrade and moved through the chaotic melee without breaking stride, snarling at a looming 'werewolf' so savagely it whimpered and cowered. He held up his arms, speaking clearly yet in a soothing tone, "Hey, poor baby, are you frightened? Hey, it's all right."

The little one looked down at a big person who was unfamiliar, but who _looked _like a _person_. She spiralled down a couple of feet as Dean encouraged her softly – and then stopped moving her wings. She didn't even have time to register the fall before she was caught by something solid and cuddled against a warm chest. Two little arms locked themselves around Dean's neck in a death-grip and she tried to burrow into the T-shirt to the warm flesh beneath, trembling with exhaustion and fear, whimpering softly as she started to cry again. Dean supported her bottom with one forearm, using his other hand to pull his jacket around her as much as he could and then support her head as he saw part of the problem.

She had ebony-black hair that someone, presumably mom, had curled into cute little ringlets and covered them with a sort of clip-on wire mesh hair ornament decorated with beads and little glass sparkles. But now she _was _an angel the fake hair ornament really was _gold _mesh, and the beads really were _pearls _and the glass sparkles really were _diamonds_. But only an adult would appreciate the monetary value; gold, and diamonds, since diamonds were a type of rock, were heavier than glass and cheap painted wire, and the thing had got caught on her hair, pulling at it painfully. With extreme care, Dean used the thumb and forefinger of his free hand to squeeze open the clips and ease the annoyance away from her hair, before shoving it in his pocket with no more care than he'd give to an empty sandwich wrapper.

Dean made his way back and up the staircase, ducking slightly under the raised elbow of Sam's arm as his younger brother held open one of the double doors at the top of the landing for him. Sam breathed a silent sigh of relief as he let the door swing back shut, glad he'd not had to shoot anyone – from the instant he'd grasped the little girl, Dean had been the most dangerous creature in the room, and would remain so as long as the child clung to him trustingly.

"Wait," he urged, having an idea. Quickly unbuckling his belt, he used it like a rope to thread around the double door handles, which happily were stick-out metal rectangles not just those polished metal or plastic 'push panes' on a lot of doors, tying the ends in a knot. "Just in case anybody decides to come upstairs – like the resident of Room 11."

Dean nodded; if the resident of Room 11 did that, he or she would end up as kitty kibble when they opened the door. There was no way they block off the open staircase from the lobby but at least they'd reduced the odds.

_Continued in Chapter 13…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	13. Chapter 13

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 13**

By the time they got to the car, a combination of exhaustion and tears had put the little girl/angel into a deep sleep; Sam unlocked the Impala and opened the back door.

"Help me out of this," Dean held out one arm, maintaining his balance on the limp little bundle in his arms.

Sam tugged the sleeve of Dean's old leather hipster down his arm so it didn't snag on his wristwatch and around his back away from the Colt tucked into his waistband before repeating the process for his other arm as Dean carefully shifted the little girl's weight; carefully Dean used his jacket like a blanket, wrapping her up in it and placing her on the back seat of the car before quietly shutting the door. Anyone – or anything – looking inside would see what appeared to be nothing more than a bundled up coat. Given how frightened she had been they had little fear she wouldn't sleep the night through.

Dean popped the trunk and they stared down at their equipment in silent frustration.

"The only non-fatal weaponry we've got are the shotguns," Sam pointed out, "and even in _that _state they're going to notice two guys opening up on them with double-barrelled 12-gauges."

"And they'll panic and try and scatter, whereas at least at the moment they're contained," Dean acknowledged.

"Besides, even if it was remotely possible to knock everyone unconscious with just one shot, it'll take our entire supply of rock salt, including the emergency stash." Sam pointed out. "Unless…where's the nearest hunter live in relation to here?"

"That I know of, is Jefferson – not only is he 105 miles back the way we drove in, but Bobby called him last week for something else and he's in Wisconsin for at least a month. Do _you _really think your lion-conquering breaking and entering skills can scotch _his_ security system?"

Sam gave a self-derisive snort; their dad's three closest hunter friends had been Jefferson, Pastor Jim Murphy and Caleb Fischer, the latter two murdered by Azazel's 'daughter'. Like John Winchester, who had been a former United States Marine Corps corporal, the majority of hunters had either a military or law enforcement background or connections to these – when something went 'bang in the night' many uniform patrol cops were first on the scene and encountering something 'paranormal and pissed' in short order. Pastor Jim had been a young Army chaplain at the back end of Vietnam and served his last tour of duty in the first Gulf War, Caleb had been US Air Force and then a patrol officer in the Chicago PD. That hunter in Britain that their dad had also sometimes emailed had also been some sort of British ex-commando type.

But Jefferson had been in "intelligence", part of that murky Alphabet Soup of Acronyms that had proliferated since 9/11. He'd been CIA 'for a while' and 'associated' with a variety of shadowy agencies that had never _quite _really existed, et cetera, et cetera. Just like John Winchester, Jefferson had never forgotten that sometimes the worst monsters were those with souls, that evil humans could not be stopped by laying your kitchen tiles in the pattern of a devil's trap or that Ted Bundy and Unabomber could sit in your living room drinking coffee percolated with Holy Water all day without coming to any harm. He had therefore done his best to ensure his home was as invulnerable to human intruders as to supernatural ones.

_I can't believe I'm about to say this_… "Call Ruby," Dean ordered, a part of him perversely enjoying the stunned look on Sam's face; _yeah, bro' "Porky's 2"; you don't know everything about me after all_.

"What?!"

"You heard me. _I'll _call Bobby."

Dean hit number 1 on his speed dial as Sam moved away from the Impala; he tuned out the murmur of Sam's voice as Bobby answered. As he had feared this was _not _a good thing.

He ended the call and turned his head as Sam came back to the Impala, his face also redefining 'grim'. "What'd she say?" he pre-empted Sam's identical question to him.

"Ruby's completely wigging out."

The sincerity and fear in his tone actually made Dean twitch in a momentary resonant sympathy for the demoness; he could relate. "Specifically…?"

"It's not the place, it's the people – specifically the sheer number of victims," Sam continued. "Which, as a side point, she also can't figure out why has this apparently hit everyone in the hotel except for you and me –"

Dean closed his eyes in belated epiphany, "Especially seeing as how Pete was in our room barely two feet away from us when he changed into Mr Stinky."

"Yup. Anyhow, stick a pin in that conundrum for later. According to Ruby, to cast a _glamour_ making a person in a zombie costume – or a whole slew of 'em – _appear_ to be a zombie is not that onerous…for instance that wailing wizard you put out of our misery could have done it with that wand and the right incantation."

"I'm picking up that the operative word here is 'appear'?"

"Yahtzee again. To _actually _turn just _one_ healthy, alive person into an _actual _reeking, dead zombie is whole new level of 'oomph'."

"How whole new level?"

"Like nuclear power level – actual _transmogrification_ of anything requires –"

"Whoa, trans-moa-goaty-_what_?"

"Trans-mog-ri-fic-ation."

"I'll take your word for it. Just bottom-line it for me Sammy; is this likely to be a demon attack and can we kill it?" _without me having to sit on my thumbs and spectate whilst you go all Super Sammy with the demon-sucking-out mojo?_ Dean left that bit of his question unsaid, but suspected Sam heard it nevertheless.

"No way. Demons can't do this…and even if they could, they _won't_."

Dean felt quite comfortable challenging the premise that hell-fiends had finer sensibilities; he'd spent the equivalent of forty years in the place after all and _he'd _never noticed any of them displaying any particular squeamishness. "They _won't_ transform people like what happened to Pete?" he allowed all his scepticism into his voice.

"It's transmogrify – and no they won't."

"Skip the semantics lecture – "

Sam growled, his face taking on that look which meant he wanted to slap Dean upside the head. "Transform and transmogrify are two different things, and it's a lot more serious than that."

"Alright, I'll give you one minute to give me the you-say-toemahto, I-say-tohmayto Cliff Notes."

Sam gave him a withering look and snapped, "Transformation is like a piece of coal. If you go about it the right way, you can _transform _it into a diamond. With me so far?"

"Close enough to kick your ass. Speed it up."

"But, a diamond is still a piece of _carbon_, like the coal. It's the difference between an Alsatian and a Labrador. _Transmogrification_ is like turning a piece of coal into…a petunia, or a shrimp cocktail."

"Why didn't you say so?" Dean got the analogy immediately. "So…we're after…what? A trickster? _Our _Trickster…again?" _Has the damned thing adopted us or something?_

"No. It would seriously – not _weaken - _but disturb a Trickster's equilibrium to do this." Sam raised a hand to prevent Dean speaking, "and yes, I do remember Bobby's whole 'demi-god-can-create-stuff-out-of-thin-air' infomercial."

"So?" Dean challenged.

"So that's not _entirely_ accurate. A Trickster can only _create _things out of things that already exist – it rearranges the molecular structure of stuff it has to hand and then restores those objects to what they originally were afterwards. Often times it had to use its own life-force to do the job, which is why Tricksters crave sugary goodness all the time – it was going through whole jugs of maple syrup pulling that Groundhog Day routine on us. When we took on the Trickster the first time in that college theatre half the surrounding trees and shrubbery in the parking lot would have disappeared to make those simulacrums it used, and they were neither real nor that robust – they disappeared as soon as you killed the Trickster – or _thought_ you did. Pete _didn't _disappear into _nothing_ and he _won't_."

"I repeat: so?"

"_So_, transmogrification requires incrementally more power and alteration of vast amounts of molecules, all of which requires vast power. It's why demons won't touch it, even if they could – it's too close to the Big 'C' – the one which goes, 'there came to be an evening and a morning, and third day'."

_As in Genesis One verse one, In the beginning, God created…_"Yikes."

"Apology accepted," Sam snarked, "besides – Tricksters prefer to go after…"

"Dicks." Dean supplied.

"Exactly. The pompous, the proud, bullies and duplicitous, conceited types that it humiliates in front of their victims – remember Dexter Hasselback? I can't see the people of Maple River managing to rack up so much bad karma that _any_ Trickster would exhaust its energy reserves so dangerously and completely as it would need to do in order to pull something on this scale off."

Dean had to agree; the only truly malicious Trickster who had ever gotten a consistently 'bad press' was 'Loki'. Even Anansi and Coyote, the two most well-known African and Native American Tricksters, were viewed more as teachers of valuable life lessons than as evil monsters in the mould of say, a wendigou. Demon hunters themselves, unless forced by a Trickster that had taken to killing its victims, would 'watch the show' and take no action. He tuned back in to Sam.

" –by's take?"

_By's take?_ _Oh yeah, Bobby._ "Basically, 'ditto'." Dean admitted. "He's never encountered anything himself, other than a Trickster, with the juice to pull this off, and like you said – only a lot more long-winded – a Trickster wouldn't due to the absence of dicks, jerk-wads and other assorted losers."

"Which still leaves us exactly nowhere." Sam pointed out. "We have a building full of terrified ex-people that are all now fairytale monsters with a few TV characters like 'Xena' and a smattering of historical figures like Queen Elizabeth I of England thrown in. At least nobody came as Hitler or Rasputin the mad monk, but that's all we've got going for us. Not to mention how that poor little girl is going to scream the place down when she wakes up and finds she's still got the wings for real. How can we fix this when one of us has to stay with her near the car?"

A very good point…_unless…_

Dean hesitated. Could Castiel hear him? _Would _Castiel hear him? Given that the last time they'd enjoyed – or endured - a heavenly visitation, Dean, Sam and Ruby had conspired to trick the angels and demons into duking it out with each other, giving Anna time to get her mojo back, Dean couldn't imagine he was anywhere _near_ Castiel's list of favourite…sentient entities.

From Anna's description,"the Big G.," was an amped-up version of John Winchester,_ '__We have to take it on faith, which we're killed if we don't have. I was stationed on Earth, two thousand years. Just watching. Silent. Invisible – out in the road... sick for home, waiting for orders from an unknowable father I can't begin to understand'_ Oh yeah, Dad hadn't been quite as extreme as: there is obedience or death, but that whole staying silent because you felt invisible, homesick and heartsick and expected to just blindly follow orders from a father you didn't understand or felt that you knew in any meaningful way, _that _Dean got.

If Anna's perceptions of heavenly reality were accurate and not coloured by her own unhappiness, Castiel would have been in _big _trouble with everyone's Ultimate Daddy the instant he got back to the Pearly Gates, particularly with that skeevy s'nufa' Uriel doubtless ratting out Castiel's reluctance to kill Anna at the first opp' to save his own skanky angelic ass –

Standing beside him, Sam suddenly stiffened and made an angry hissing sound in his throat –

And a tall, slender man with a sad face and haunted blue eyes, hunched slightly inside an old Columbo-style rain-coat, appeared literally from nowhere next to the Impala.

_Continued in Chapter 14…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	14. Chapter 14

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 14**

"On-call angels? Who knew?" The quip slipped out reflexively, Dean half-surprised it had worked at all.

Castiel, however, did not look happy or even benevolent. "I am _not_ your personal servant. You _dare_ to summon me to fix one of your trivial human hunts –"

Dean gave a loud laugh, clearly surprising both Castiel and Sam – well at least it halted Sammy trying to glare him into spontaneous combustion for a few seconds – "Hello, could you contemplate checking your ego at the door for a sec'? I'm _Dean Winchester_, and I will _need _help _hunting _from some wet-behind-the-wings, been-out-of-the-game-for-two-thousand-years Sammy-lite _nerd _roughly a week past _never_. All _you _have do Cast-off, is protect the _other _angel." Stepping forward, Dean forcefully opened the rear door of the car and gestured with a wave of his hand at the tiny child nestled in his hipster.

Castiel opened his mouth then paused, a very satisfying expression of confusion clouding his face as his senses told him that the obliviously sleeping toddler simultaneously _was _and _was not _a real angel. "She - has Grace, but it's _artificial_…"

"Whatever." Dean shut the door. "All you have to do is nothing. Just stand here, _don't _move, and anything that _isn't _us comes to the car, kill it. Sam, shotguns." Going to the trunk, Dean popped the lid and tossed a 12-gauge to Sam, taking a second for himself, before closing the lid again and just walking away towards the main doors into the hotel, which they had firmly shut behind them after taking the precaution of find a spare set of keys behind the front desk.

Sam was beside him, the look of his face virtually apoplectic. He needed Sam sharp; his younger brother could pout when Pete and Co were restored. "Sulk later, Sam –"

"_SulK!_" It is very difficult to explode with rage yet keep your voice to a whisper and your body language contained, but Sam did a very credible job of the task. "Did you down a whole bottle of stupid _and _crazy pills when I wasn't looking?!"

Okay, so it looked like they were going to have a little nightcap of 'furious argument' after all. Dean also kept his voice lowered as they hovered outside the main entrance, though he suspected that Castiel, and any other angel who cared to, could hear a pin being dropped in Paraguay if they wished. "What would you suggest were the alternatives, Sam? Ask Bobby or Ellen to drive three hundred miles to get here in under an hour? Or have you been hiding Ruby's super-duper teleportation powers from me as well now? Castiel was the only option left."

"Oh yeah, and what if Castiel's pyromaniac pal shows up? Good ole 'let's flash fry every living thing in sight'?"

"I seriously doubt Uriel will be bothered enough to get off his cloud." Dean retorted – _at least I can hope_.

"And what if the thing that's doing _this_ turns out to be a _demon_?"

"We got the dagger back, genius, remember? We can use that."

"Why should I?"

"Don't go there, Sam." Dean's own anger was front and central. "You know that using those powers is _wrong_."

"Why, because Castiel says so?"

"He's an _angel!_"

"_So's Uriel!_" Sam's face was almost beetroot with anger as he hissed at Dean. "Or so they claim. You see a glimpse of Castiel's supposed wings for all of two seconds but instantly come down all righteous wrath on me because Castiel – whom you've known for all of five seconds – tells you that me saving people by using my powers rather than _killing them_ along with the demon courtesy of the dagger is _bad_?"

"Just spit it out, Sam. Say what you mean."

"Alright, tell me one thing, Dean. Would you have been so rapid in your rush to judgement and to sing from the 'Sam's a bad boy' rap sheet if the first angel you ever met had been _Uriel _and not Castiel?"

…

"That's what I thought."

"That's beside the point, Sam –"

"That _is _my point! Dean, you are the best hunter I've ever met, and there are a lot out there who believe the same thing. No matter how much I hated being a hunter myself I always felt that pride when I was able to say to veterans like Bobby and Jefferson that 'Yeah, I'm _Dean Winchester's brother._'"

Dean didn't know what to say, and felt himself blushing. He'd never really been aware of being any better than hunters like Dad or Bobby or Pastor Jim or Caleb…

"…But all Castiel did was flick you a glimpse of wingtip like a Victorian maiden flashing a hint of stocking and you've jettisoned your scepticism and hunter intuition wholesale. Forget hook, line and sinker, you're swallowing whole fishing trawlers!"

"Why, because I _believe_ Castiel is an angel and because I _agree _with him that you using the powers you got from Azazel against other demons can only end very, very badly?"

"No, because you have this massive blind spot of gullibly accepting whatever Castiel tells you 'is' as, well, Gospel."

"So you're saying that Castiel is _lying_ to me?"

"No, he's _editing_."

"Huh?"

"Okay, example one," sniped Sam, despite their continued whispering managing to inject full sarcasm into his tone, "your little _Back to the Future_ trip. Have you asked Castiel to explain all the stuff he oh so conveniently _left out_?"

"What stuff?" Dean remembered all too well the anguish of not being able to prevent his grandparents' murders and the horror of Mom making that fateful deal with Azazel.

"For starters, one second Dad is trying to mediate a fight between Mary and _her_ Dad, next thing he knows he's 'coming round' in Mary's arms on the blacktop with a humongous headache and no Daddy Campbell in sight. How did she explain away the gory murders of _both_ her parents to a fiancé who _knew_ they were alive and well an hour earlier? What about the Lawrence PD, and her _own _future father-in-law, since you said Grandpa Winchester was obviously alive in 1973. Then there's grand-uncle Ed. Mary _must_ have been in sufficient contact with Edward Campbell and their hunter friends for him to know enough, or be scared enough, to junk avenging the murder of his brother and sister-in-law to them all staying under the radar so well that it took Azazel nearly 20 years to find him and the others."

"I don't know." Dean confessed reluctantly.

"And you never even _thought_ to wonder what _other_ potentially important facts have apparently slipped Castiel's celestial mind."

"That doesn't change the fact that using the powers Azazel infected you with to attack demons is not just wrong, but dangerous, and yes, Sam, crazy-and-stupid."

"Oh really? I repeat: says who?" retorted Sam. "And since we're on the subject, what about Missouri Moseley and Pamela Barnes."

"What _about_ them?"

"Two powerful psychics, Dean. But Azazel never dripped his blood into their infant mouths. For all you – or I – know, I could have been _born_ with this power –"

"Oh, so the superheroics are all your own work –"

"_Think_ about it, Dean!" Sam urged, losing his snarling tone in his earnestness. "Azazel targeted people who had certain latent or low-level abilities, because he knew they would become a parent to stronger children. Azazel's plan was to use the psychic kids like a guy illegally hooking up his trailer to the grid to get cable and utilities for free. The guy can't do that if the power lines and telegraph poles _aren't already there_ in the _first place_ –"

"And you and the other kids had to have been born with some level of abilities already there for Azazel to have something to connect to." Dean realised; _otherwise why didn't he bleed in my mouth and the other special kids' siblings' mouths to cover all the bases too?_

"Exactly my point – yet you can't or won't see Castiel and company's rank hypocrisy. Talk about pots calling kettles!"

"What's _that _supposed to mean?" Dean challenged.

"It means that _I _saw the wings too, Dean. I was treated to a close-up and personal view when Mr 'Mankind Are Mud Monkeys' got in my face and threatened to _murder _me."

_Uriel had threatened to kill Sam_…_before_ his go around with Dean in that barn where, as Dean, Sam, Ruby and Anna had actually _counted_ on him to do, Uriel had given Dean the 'We'll kill Sam or Anna, your call' routine?

Accurately interpreting his brother's expression, Sam snapped, "What do you think _gave_ me the _idea _for you to 'let' Uriel coerce you into 'betraying' Anna in the _first _place? Or made me so _sure _he would use that 'Sam or Anna dies you choose' routine to 'break' you instead of physical torture or some _other_ mind-game?"

"When?"

"November Second, 2008." Sam enunciated the words bitterly. "You may remember it was the day after we stopped Tweedle-Crazy and Tweedle-Crazier slaughtering one thousand two hundred fourteen people. I'm packing our gear when Uriel's suddenly sat on the couch. One second he's all commiserating about how hard it must be for me – the anniversary of my mother's murder, followed twenty-two years later on the same night by my fiancée's murder. Next second it's flaring wings and totally in my face with the fact that I was only alive because I was still useful, and the second I ceased being useful I'd be murdered. _And don't you dare _stand there and try and say he was just trying to frighten me into obeying that no-powers diktat."

"And you're _still _using your powers?" Dean felt the bile of real fear sting his throat – he had no real or effective way, yet, of protecting Sam from Uriel – or Castiel…or Alistair. "And you're making smart-ass 'stupid pill' remarks to _me?_ Isn't _that _some pot on kettle action?"

"Maybe, but I'll tell you where the real hypocrisy comes in, Dean. Y'see I've lived through that useful-for-now speech _before_. Before Uriel regurgitated it, the _last_ time I heard it was in that abandoned mining town before Jake Tulley used his Kabar knife to sever my spinal cord. Azazel played me the whole riff, only that time it was 'Dean is useful for now but he gets in my way once and I'll kill him'. Do you know how terrified I was _every day_ that Azazel would manage to kill you and I wouldn't be able to stop it?"

"I didn't know that."

Sam raised his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, his expression changing from anger to weariness. "Look, Dean, my powers…still scare me probably more than they do you. And, okay, maybe Castiel _is_ right when he says me using Azazel's fire to fight hellfire is going to end in tears. But I see _no reason _why I should kowtow to the divine party line when like George Orwell's animals looking from pig to man and back again, I look at Uriel and Azazel and see no discernable difference between psychotic angel getting his rocks off on mass murder and psychotic demon getting his rocks off on mass murder." Sucking in a much-needed breath he bluntly admitted, "Honestly, if I was forced to pick risking turning my back to Uriel or to Ruby, I know which one I'd pick –"

"And it wouldn't be the rep from the Choir Invisible, you've made that perfectly clear." Dean snapped; Sam's hand visibly tightened on the shotgun, and it occurred to Dean that both of them had had stupid pills if they were having a raging argument when they were both armed to the teeth.

"Oh really? Do you happen to remember telling me that if I wasn't your brother, you'd _hunt me_?" Sam charged.

"Yes." Dean didn't flinch, though inwardly he recoiled from the memory of his angry outburst.

"Well right back at yah, bro'. Remember when you told me about how Azazel taunted you, '_How sure are you that what you brought back is 100 percent pure Sam_'? What do you think has been keeping _me _awake staring at the ceiling cracks night after night – I can practically _feel_ that so not-cute red-hand brand Castiel slapped on your shoulder."

"You have no _comprehension _– "

"You were in _Hell_, Dean – and our little Celebrity Deathmatch with each other courtesy of the Siren demonstrated your _wicked _pain inflicting skills, pun intended. You were there for _forty years_ according to your reckoning – and for the last ten of them you got off the rack and were _helping _Alistair torture people – was one of them _Bela?_!"

The air was still in Dean's lungs but they spontaneously seized up. The gorge rose in his throat as his head swam and he knew he was going to hurl…

Hands gripped his upper arms, holding him upright, digging in, hurting, but oh sweet thank you that physical pain was enough for him to regain control, shoving the contents of his belly back down where they belonged. He looked up into Sam's – _Sammy's _– anguished face, the sheen of moisture across his brother's eyes that Sam didn't bother to hide.

"_Dean,_" Sam muttered his brother's name in an encompassing apology and request for forgiveness.

"I don't know if she – I can't – " Dean choked out the words – so many screams, so many faces, so much _shame_.

"Dean, it's alright, you didn't…she _wasn't_ one of them," Sam whispered in self-loathing, clasping his brother's shoulders and feeling the tremors wracking him.

"You don't know that – " _I don't know that_.

"Dean, Ruby asked me how many people I thought held out against some no-name _imp_ for three hours, or even three days, never mind thirty years against a monster like Alistair. Ruby said that Alistair was vicious but unimaginative, and she was right. I wish with all my heart that he _had_ been stupid enough and unoriginal enough to try and use Bela against you, because if he had, he would _never_ have broken you Dean, never."

"You don't _know_ that," Dean whispered again.

Sam didn't flinch or look away from Dean's despairing eyes. They'd both gone past the point of no return in this confrontation. "Dean, I know _you_. We both know Bela Talbot wasn't the world's nicest person, but what she suffered as a child was monstrous, and she didn't deserve to suffer any further. I wish Alistair _had _played some riff about how he was keeping Bela all safe to be your virgin torture victim, because it would only have made you fight _harder _to resist him; you could never have hurt anyone that you _knew_, not even Bela. She couldn't have been one of the souls you attacked, you wouldn't have continued if it were her."

_Do you really believe that, Sammy, or are you trying to convince yourself as much as me? What would you say if I admitted that I have no idea if one of my victims was Bela, but sometimes in the swirling rush of screaming faces, I think that one of them might have been Ruby…_

Sam ploughed on, right here and right now unable to take much more of their mutual evisceration, of either self or each other, but _needing_ to make his point. "Every day last year I used to look in the mirror and tell myself that Gordon Walker was deranged and _wrong_ about me. Think about it Dean, you were desperate to keep me away from other hunters because you were afraid they'd pick the 'fanatical psychopath camp' of opinion about me. But how many hunters do you think _wouldn't _be locking and loading if they knew that _you _had been resurrected after four months' dead and yanked out of Hell no less by a supposed angel? That's not even counting any of them who came to a decision after spending just five minutes of quality time in something like Uriel's company."

"So now you worry Gordon Walker was right about _both_ of us?" the reflux acid still stung Dean's throat, making his voice hoarse.

"Aren't you?" Sam challenged. "How would you have _expected_ me – or someone like Dad – to react on finding out that _you_ routinely consort with winged homicidal maniacs? _You're_ living in a glasshouse and heaving boulders at _me?_ I _know _exactly what Ruby _is _Dean, and I make sure I never forget it for a second. What's your excuse?"

"Layla Rourke," shot back Dean softly, feeling a twinge of satisfaction at momentarily silencing Sam's tirade. "Like she said, real faith remains, even when the miracle _doesn't _happen. I thought you of all people would understand that, Sam."

And finally the last residue of that self-righteous angry mask crumbled away from the edges of Sam's face, leaving the more gentle features of his baby brother, as Sam made a soft choking sound that he clearly meant to be a laugh, but was perilously close to a strangled sob.

"Not anymore." Sam squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his fingers over them wearily, which only made his bloodshot sclera worse, looking at Dean with that soft appeal that had always been there – _you're my big brother Dean, make it better_ – as he spoke with bitter weariness. "I _stopped_ praying - to _anything_ -the day Uriel claimed that what I've spent my whole life praying _to_ was happy to annihilate over 1200 innocent people rather than bother to lift a celestial finger and directly stop Samhain. That doesn't even count how I saw Uriel _and _Castiel treat Anna, who had done nothing but start _thinking for herself_ – free will as a crime only exists in places like Nazi Germany and Communist countries and nations ruled by Muslim terrorists – if that's heaven…." He gave a shake of his head as if to clear it. "I guess Layla could have taught me a thing or two about genuine Faith as well, 'cause she don't live here anymore, and she hasn't left a forwarding address."

Dean said nothing; there was nothing to say. In the corny but appropriate lyrics of Bon Jovi, _two hearts are breaking even tonight_.

He wished he could give Sam back his faith in there being Real Meaning To It All; he wished he could demolish every justification Sam had claimed for continuing to use the powers that may or may not have been acquired from Azazel. He wished he could take on the burden of fear Sam lived under; he wished he couldn't remember what he'd done in Hell and he wished he could trust that Bela Talbot hadn't been one of his victims and remember if Ruby had. He wished he could offload the burden of future choices that Castiel had warned him lay heavy across his own shoulders in the coming months. He wished that Sam didn't share his bed and his body with a demon more nights than not, and above all he wished that little Lillith would have the demonic equivalent of a massive coronary caused by debauched living and do the universe a huge favour by not being in it anymore.

_Yeah, and I wish I'd been able to stay in Morning Hill back in Indiana, making more Winchester babies with Lisa and coaching Ben for Little League at the outrageously expensive prep school I sent him to after winning the Publishers Clearing House lottery_. Dean managed to suppress an inappropriate snort of self-derision just in time. Yeah, and he'd like to have a unicorn as a pet and have pixies do the gardening while he was at it.

He had no answers, or help, to give either Sam or himself right now, so he asked simply, "So what do you want to do?"

"What do I _want_? It'd take years…what I'll _settle _for here and now is to kill whatever did this to these nice people, restore them to _being_ nice people, and then finish our favour for Bobby like he asked us to - without sight nor sound of Castiel, Uriel, Ruby, Anna, Alistair or the damned Tooth Fairy." Sam reeled off.

_Continued in Chapter 15…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	15. Chapter 15

Thank you for all reviews of this story so far – they are very kind and much appreciated. Please note, I can't respond to reviews if no reply URL or email address is included, I have had some very nice reviewers that I cannot thank, so thanks to all.

Lamento Casammy - No puedo responder a su dirección de correo electrónico, pero he leído sus comentarios (traducido al Inglés). Me alegro de que te gusta la historia.

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 15**

As he moved across the parking lot, Dean had an almost physical struggle to keep his head in the game, despite being aware of what truly vicious creatures could be lurking in the shrubbery – the amount of power required, this wasn't groups of 'gaming geeks' sat staring a computers thinking about Mordecai the Tulpa who'd inadvertently given life to the nasty.

But his mind relentlessly kept chugging on one track. _Is Sam right?_ Or maybe the question should be '_How _right is Sam?' His brother was certainly correct in his claim that Dean had been largely unquestioning of either the veracity or the moral righteousness of what Castiel had told him. Even after that whole showdown between Castiel and Uriel versus Alistair and Co., over Anna, the – now restored? – angel, Dean's instincts were still more for Castiel than against him. Unlike Uriel, who had been practically slobbering at the thought of killing Anna, Castiel's reluctance to do so had been palpable. The only other being so obvious in their visceral eagerness to slaughter Anna had been Alistair; again like Sam said, weren't Uriel and Alistair pot and kettle?

Dean shuddered. He would give pretty much anything not to remember anything of where he'd been for forty years – or rather, the last ten. Thirty years of being unspeakably tortured he could live with…that last decade of being Alistair's Little Helper, causing harm to other souls, was anathema to everything Dean had ever believed about himself and how he had lived his life. His job was to protect the innocent and the vulnerable, not become that which they needed to protection _from_.

_I obeyed the sign, and Abandoned All Hope_…even as he lectured Sam on letting it go, that he had made the deal in full knowledge, etc., there had still been a tiny, tiny part of Dean who had hoped for that 'with-a-single-bound' get out jail free card, or if not, that somehow, some way, Sam would be able to rescue him. He'd held on to that hope for thirty years, and then let it go. One more decade, that was all he'd needed to endure, and he could have held his head up in front of anyone when Castiel snatched him from the pit…

Yay again for good ole infallible hindsight; nevertheless, his inner pessimist had always known how things were likely to turn out, given his own 'hunters die bloody or sad' credo – otherwise he wouldn't have had that far from fun _Superman 3_ moment getting down with his literal bad self back in Pittsburgh when they'd saved Bobby. At least that psycho kid Jeremy had clearly demonstrated that having an immense IQ didn't mean that intelligence and common sense lived in the same zip code.

Ironic really, IQ of 160 and it had been Jeremy's _stupidity_ that had saved Bobby and him and Sam. As Bobby had admitted to them both in the aftermath, what made African Dream Root so dangerous to mess around with was that it acted like a djinn, only without the trauma. A djinn's weapon was to put its victim in a delusional state where they lived out their deepest wish as if it were reality, while the djinn drained their blood and eventually killed them.

But even those poor souls who were unable to break free of the stupor knew on some level that they had been _attacked_, and that knowledge had helped him snap out of it in the end. But the Dream Root was a _conscious _choice and it enabled the user vastly more control over the dreamscape. If that idiot genius Jeremy had been sensible enough to skew Bobby's dream positively instead of negatively – giving him a scenario where he was able to save his wife – it would have been much less likely that even Dean would have been able to persuade Bobby to voluntarily wake up, to return to a reality where his beloved wife was long-dead and he was a lonely, aging and increasingly stove-up demon hunter whose closest 'family' substitutes were a pair of humongously dysfunctional brothers that these days seemed to fight each other more than they fought the monsters.

And, much as he and Sam were at odds right now, Sam's refusal to let Dean go into dreamland on his lonesome had been bang on the nail. Without Sam at his shoulder, Dean knew he would probably have given in to his desire to share 'just one glass' of wine on that bright, cheerful picnic cloth with Lisa; doubtless giving homicidal Jeremy the time and opportunity to sneak up behind him and bludgeon him to death.

It had still taken awhile afterwards for Sam to stop repeatedly giving him that Look – astonishment, mingled with pity, tinged with compassion, and amazingly overlaid with finally some understanding. Sam had lost Jessica Lee Moore to an inferno, but Dean had, in potential, a _family_ out there in the shape of Lisa and Ben available to him and both brothers knew it.

After all, that had been why, out of all his 'encounters', he had not just _remembered _Lisa Braidan but sought her out above all others, including Cassie. He had left Cicero believing her claim that Ben wasn't his son because he'd _wanted_ to, but in the cold dark of night it wasn't exactly any stretch of brainpower to figure out that Lisa had lied, and also _why_.

After she had obliquely but firmly rejected him again though they'd saved her from Cyrus Dorian, Dean had finally realised his feelings for Cassie Robinson had had more intensity than depth; it had been infatuation, a bright and strong burning, but only briefly, rather than love, which like a deep and placid mountain lake wasn't as flashy, or as spectacular, but endured and nourished growth and life rather than consuming itself and burning to ashes.

Yet in that one night with Lisa, even as a callow, horn-dog 20-year-old more gleeful than grateful at bedding a woman three or four years older than himself, Dean had experienced more of a genuine emotional connection than throughout his entire month-long affair with Cassie. He had just been too shallow to realise it for many months afterwards until dad had called him on his moodiness and told him '_to get whatever bug it is out of your ass'_ because he was a danger to himself, Sam, John and their friends on the hunt if he didn't have it together.

John had probed no deeper; Dean's maintaining his level as a hunter was his only concern. Trouble was it wasn't getting out a bug that was the problem, it was his inability to get into Lisa preferably on a nightly basis; cue his - still ongoing - roll call of 'good-time' encounters that had never matched up to that one 'great' night. Before returning to Indiana with Sam, he'd never admitted even to himself why so many of his one-night-only 'galpals' tended to be long-haired brunettes with velvet-dark eyes and warm mink skin that you just knew was soft and made for stroking…even Anna had matched the descrip' of 'Wanted: Always'.

Lisa Braidan had been a rare and special experience in his life that he had only appreciated after opportunity had slipped through his fingers. She had approached _him_ diffidently in a bar he wasn't old enough to be in for another year, proffering just 'Lisa' even though he had reciprocated with his name and shown her his (fake) ID so she could at least mostly sure he wasn't some nutjob; she'd agreed immediately to his unsubtle suggestion they take it back to his 'budget motel', and at first it had been nothing more than another 'brief encounter' for purely physical release like going to the gym or eating when hungry. But then she'd rocked his world…

_Continued in Chapter 16…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

**WARNING: **The following chapter details a sexualised scene. The scene is relevant to the sub-plot of Sam and Dean's conflict with each other, but it is **not essential** to know for the main plot of the story and therefore if the main plot is really your central interest go straight to **Chapter 17**.

Personally I dislike writing or reading or watching detailed scenes of sex, violence, torture, religious/occult rituals, criminal/abusive activity – I believe subtlety is far more sensual, and more is less, etc. (The hint-flashes from Dean's memory are far more effective than detailed gruesome and unrealistic lingering shots of towering infernos, etc). A hint of cleavage or one button open on a pair of jeans is far more sexually stimulating than bare everywhere, because it hooks the imagination, and the anticipation of the guy/gal who knows that if they work at it enough he/she will be the one who gets to see the whole enchilada of what's under that blouse or packing those pants. I realise mine may not be a widely held view but it's a fact of life that people tend to value that which they have to make an effort and a commitment of time and/or money to obtain – the more time/effort/money they have to put in, the more they esteem X once they've got it; the same is true of sexual encounters – if nothing is left to the imagination, there is no need to exert any effort, and that tends to lead to a lack of appreciation, courtesy or even acknowledgement the other is a human being and not an object for our own selfish gratification.

On saying that, I feel strongly that the scene is congruent in context, as it is Dean reliving his memories and in line with the way his character would think and feel and recall.

It was also necessary for Dean and Lisa to have had something extraordinary, despite it being a one-night stand ('the best night of my life Dean'? as one character says). Let's be honest, Dean is a bit of a male tramp/man-slut; remember at the beginning of the episode he knew nothing of Ben, so why, knowing he was dying and wanting to reconnect to one of his many 'exes', was it that he immediately remembered a woman with whom he'd spent only a few hours nearly ten years before as well, over such as Cassie Robinson, with whom he'd had an actual relationship, or some more recent one-night lustathon?

Lisa also had to be profound in some way – we know she didn't meet Dean at a church social but by the same token we can assume she didn't make a habit of pulling studs in biker bars; at the end of the episode it is obvious she is lying about Ben's paternity and why – because she is a brave woman who realises all the people who will die if she gives in to her want to have Dean stay with her. She sacrifices her own wants for the greater good. Promiscuous people – of both sexes – tend to be greedy, selfish people, solely obsessed with self-gratification and getting their own desires met heedless of the inconvenience and hurt to others; self-denial and self-sacrificing actions are not part of their _oeuvre_. Yet Lisa did not hesitate to put what was best for Dean and the wider public ahead of her own self-interests.

However, I reiterate, Chapter 16 is only relevant to the brotherly conflict sub-plot, not the main monster mash plot, so if it's not your bag, you can skip Chapter 16 and go straight to Chapter 17, where things will rapidly go from bad to you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me.


	16. Chapter 16

**WARNING: **This details a sexualised scene. The scene is relevant to the sub-plot of Sam and Dean's conflict with each other, but it is **not essential** to know for the main plot of the story and therefore if this is not to your preference, go straight to Chapter 17. However, the scene is congruent in context, as it is Dean reliving his memories and in line with the way his character would think and feel and recall, but if you are more interested in the main 'monsters, monsters everywhere' storyline, you can skip Chapter 16 and go straight to Chapter 17… Single Italicised words denote emphasis; bloc Italicised text denotes past events

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 16**

She had displayed no qualms about going back to the motel, but then with all the people around who had seen them and could ID him _and_ more pertinently the Impala, he would've been the world's _stupidest _serial killer if he'd tried anything. Back in his room she'd been enthusiastic and into it – he'd ridden her, she'd ridden him and still feeling his oats, he'd had her again, vigorously. After that, they'd both drifted into a pleasantly tired sleep, or at least _he _had.

At some point as the night crept inexorably onwards _Lisa_ somehow had managed to dress herself, and even have one hand on the motel door handle and her killer stilettos dangling from the other when he'd woken up, no mean feat for an amateur in the sneaky stakes, considering that normally, Dean Winchester slept about as deeply as a man walking across a tightrope above Niagara Falls…

"_You were just going to leave without a word?"_ _He sat up in the middle of the motel's wrecked bed, heedless of the way the badly crumpled sheet barely covered his sex._

"_Isn't that usually the woman's line?" a smile flickered briefly across her face, but was gone too fast, leaving her melted-chocolate eyes pools of mystery as she looked at him._

_His stomach muscles tightened as he took in her beautiful, long chestnut and cinnamon hair, all messed up, sticky-out, tangled and bed-heady; with that strapless little black dress clearly so hastily tugged up it was higher under one arm than the other, and the seams all skew-if and her endless legs bare of the stockings he'd peeled off and tossed who-knew-where, she looked like some exotic concubine who'd jumped out of the king's bed but was ready to jump right back in again. No way could she leave this skeevy dive alone and unprotected looking like __**that**__. He couldn't even remember what __**State**__ they were in, never mind take a guess how rough this 'hood was – and that only counted the human monsters lurking in the shadows, never mind what else might be out there that would take one look at her and think 'yummy' for all the wrong reasons._

"_You __**really**__ have a pressing appointment to be some place that's else at – ooh, three-fifty in the morning?" He kept his tone light and fluffily conversational._

"_Would you believe me if I said yes?" she quipped, but they both knew the truth – this was classic embarrassment - 'that last double bourbon's about worn off and I've realised what I was doing last night'._

"_Come back to bed, I'll take you home in the morning – the __**real **__morning – the one with breakfast and, oh-please-dear-lord, __**coffee**__, included."_

_As he'd intended, she chuckled softly, but shook her head slightly as she eyed the bed, which had already had to prove its robustness. "I don't think that would be a good idea."_

"_Was I so terrible?" he'd meant to sustain the banter by playing on his cute boyish poutiness, but the superficial humour fled her face in an instant as his words came out with more vulnerability – and sincerity – than he had consciously intended._

_Something dark and anguished flickered in her eyes; lightly letting the stilettos slip from her fingers she ignored their bounce on the carpet and returned to the bed, sitting down on the edge; her weight made the mattress dip and automatically shifted his body towards her, which, definitely __**not**__ a problem. _

_She looked into his eyes, her own infinitely sad. "You were so wonderful."_

_Embarrassed about such bald, honest praise, he opened his mouth to make the crass quip that had he said it before would have had enabled her to just open the door and walk out on him, but she placed the fingertips of her hand over his lips and he stilled._

"_Before tonight I was in…a bad place…in my life. I was on the verge of making…an unwise decision about my future."_

_He chilled as he recognised the euphemism and her underlying admission that, had it not been for encountering him, after tonight the world would have been a place __**without**__ her in it. Instinctively he raised his hands to grip her upper arms, as if by sheer willpower he could bind her to the earth, to remain in the physical and living world._

"_You gave me back __**me**__, Dean. You made me feel...you made me __**feel**__. I have value; I am capable of connecting with the world…again. Tonight has been magical," she paused and couldn't help a tiny smile at his male preening, "… which is why I'd rather leave before the cold light of day shines too bright a light on the fantasy."_

"_Then in the cold light of today I'll keep you warm," he kissed her - again gently, the merest brush of his lips against hers, rather than the tongue-thrusting that would have given her the strength to move away and take her leave._

"_I really should go…" she murmured, but hesitantly, and her lips were soft against his own._

"_Please." _

_Simple and sincere, it was beyond her to resist the plea; her sigh was the tiniest exhalation of acquiescence as he cupped her face between his hands and lightly kissed her._

_They continued to kiss, just lips to lips, arms around each other, and she had no willpower to resist such tender warfare, much as she really should…_

_Dean lifted his mouth and pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose, making her blink at the simple, sweet affection of it, then pressed a kiss to her forehead. The sorrowfulness he had seen in her eyes when she had obliquely admitted her intent had triggered his masculine instinct to protect the vulnerable, and his hunter instinct to claim his prey. He was going to rock her world; if ever again she considered even for a moment removing herself from the world, he was going to make certain she shivered with the remembered ecstasy of tonight, and burned with the hope it might happen again. And if she ever, ever, even once contemplated a repeat of being so dumb as to pick up some random guy in a bar, this night would ruin her forever for any other – he would sear the memory of himself into her every cell: mine. _

_She combed her fingers into his hair as he returned to her moist lips and deepened the kiss, skimming his hands up to her shoulders and he eased them both back down onto the bed, his own body covering hers without breaking the kiss as locks of her hair wound round his fingers; she was comforting, cradling welcome, soothing the hard angles and planes and sinewy musculature of his form._

_The solid feel of him over her was itself a sensuous happiness; Lisa looked up into his eyes – literally glittering with sexual intent, and felt her feminine core pulse in response – and warning. _

_She had miscalculated. Her decision to end her life in the cold light of day after one last wild night of sensory and sensuous abandon had been impulsive, but her practical implementation of the plan had not. A recent college-graduate guy or man similar to her own twenty-four years of age would not hesitate to take up the no-strings offer, but the incipient burgeoning of actual adult maturity caused by finally leaving school, getting a job and having to live in the world could make him trouble. If she fell asleep – which she had – it might have prompted such a man to decide 'Lisa' was not enough and go through her purse whilst she slept. Some stud, three or four years her junior, would in contrast only be interested in the face value of her offer and when he woke up alone past the dawn she would trickle through his memory like water leaking out of a sieve, leaving a nostalgic boast of 'some chick' memory if at all. _

_Dean Winchester's eyes were hot with desire but simultaneously somehow also had ice around the edges – the ice not of callousness but of implacability. She saw in them the reflection of herself, a child whom circumstances had denied the chance to be a child, the reflection of a soul long made old in a young body by taking on the responsibilities that all children should be oblivious to for years. _

_She had been fooled by the packaging - she'd sized him up in the bar as if he were legally there – age 21 – then he was only just; his faint smirk and the casually familiar yet subtly alert way he drank his beer letting her know he was in fact not yet legal – 19, probably 20. His eyes were the green of a fresh spring hazel leaf, sheened with the gold of morning sun, and now they almost glowed with a purely male, and even slightly predatory, intention. _

_Lisa remembered all those cautionary tales for kids about how naughty little children who yanked the tiger's tail were inevitably leapt upon and eaten up. Dean Winchester was far older than he looked – and far more dangerous than his winsome smile made you notice; something ancient and purely feminine deep inside her told her she had tweaked the tail of the right tiger – and she was about to be pounced up and devoured. _

_She moved her hands, reaching towards his chest to stroke his nipples, which three times around had already demonstrated were sensitive._

"_No, don't," he gently held her wrists, preventing the contact. He pressed a soft kiss into the palm of her left hand and then her right. "This is all about you, just for you. Pretend…pretend you're one of those ancient empresses, who had a slave do absolutely everything for her, and let __**me**__…you…you just __**feel**__."_

_His ungilded tenderness was her undoing; her heart tightened within her breast and then finally opened itself in acceptance of him, as her body had already done. She did as he asked, and lowered her hands to her sides, rubbing the sheets between her fingers uncertainly, but willing to follow his lead. _

_He kissed the tiny hollow of Lisa's throat, then made butterfly kisses along her left collarbone up to her shoulder as his hands eased her dress down, freeing her luscious breasts. He cupped them, brushing his thumbs back and forth tantalisingly along the sensitive undersides, just under but not once quite touching her nipples; they tightened to pink, proud peaks and then he traced a dainty trail with his mouth down from her shoulder, delicately curling his tongue around her left nipple, drawing it into his mouth to suckle as he continued to stroke the underside with his hand, using his right thumb and forefinger to fondle her right nipple. _

_It was wonderful beyond description; Lisa watched him leisurely suckle her with his eyes half-closed, no rush, no urgency, no drive, he was just enjoying…enjoying her. She pressed her fingers into the mattress slightly. True, they did itch faintly at the sight of all that smooth, bronze skin to caress but there was something so naughtily enticing about just…enjoying being enjoyed; like he said, reclining like a queen upon her divan. It was ever so deliciously decadent - for once, __**not **__to __**have**__ to reciprocate, to be able to lay languid and wantonly nude and accept his attentions as __**her**__ rightful due, an ancient empress secure in her femininity. _

_It made her feel __**powerful**__…it made her feel utterly, profoundly __**female **__in a way she could never articulate but understood completely, as he switched his attention to her neglected right nipple, before setting off on the butterfly kiss trail again. He explored her body all over again as if it were the first time, like a blind man learning Braille. He stroked the delicate insides of her wrists, the pads of his fingertips transmitting her pulse, tracing the fine bones of her hands; nuzzling the ticklish centre of her palms and then those nibbleable areas under her earlobes that made her shiver when he grazed them with his teeth. _

_He kissed down her midriff to the top of her left thigh, kissing her dimpled knee, traced the smooth curve of her calf, and made her gasp by playfully nipping that little area of skin near her ankle bone, before massaging the sensitive arch of her foot and fondling her dainty toes with their dusky pink-painted nails. She had had no idea her whole body could be turned into this…this __**instrument **__of blissful euphoric sensation._

_He moved his ministrations to her right foot, teasing his way up that leg, and her fingers flexed as she gripped and released the bedclothes in anticipation of his journey's end as he kissed her hip and used his fingers to trace teasing gossamer circles on the tender skin of her inner thighs, smaller and smaller, higher and higher, as she quivered with her need to have him __**there**__…_

_And his mouth brushed her left hip as he diverted away, past the core of her desire. She actually gave a growl of frustration and he looked at her, an expression of mock innocence plastered across his wicked, wicked face, betrayed by his eyes glowing hotly with lust – and silent laughter. She bared her teeth at him and glared – me-empress-you-slave – and if he didn't go __**there**__, where she pulsed with need for him, there was going to be __**violence**_**…**

_A ghost of a chuckle escaped but __**yes**__ he kissed her mouth and slipped two fingers into her – and she came immediately, her release rolling through her like a warm, swelling wave of delightfulness, so she sighed with the relief of it, and then felt herself begin the climb to the next peak…_

_Dean felt beads of sweat trickle down his back, not pausing in the slightest as he continued to stroke his fingers inside her, rubbing that special place, licking his lips in preparatory anticipation of replacing his fingers with his mouth – a lifetime of training in waiting in complete stillness for hours for minutes or seconds of frantic action stood fast and helped him keep his desire in check – he was far from finished with her yet._

_She peaked again with a sighing shiver as he kissed her there at the juncture of her thighs, the entrance to the heart of her. The soft mewls she made were sweet to him as he carefully nibbled and tasted that tiny, secret bud protected within her mound, kissing and licking the very core of her as she lost herself in languid ripples of bliss, the only sound her hitching sighs of completion as he luxuriated in the pleasure of pleasuring her; he kept his pace measured with leisurely flicks of his tongue as he lovingly laved every moist fold of her luscious, delicate inner tissues so she quivered and gasped and whimpered and helplessly arched her hips towards his mouth as if in offering; that little nubbin was taut and plump and he grasped the ripe globes of her buttocks and held her still for his satisfaction, her every chanting sob of his name was music, as he rhythmically suckled her intimately until she was swollen from his ministrations, her juices warm, liquid honey just for him; he feasted upon her like she was a banquet of delectable morsels spread beneath him, as if she were an ancient, wanton queen, lush and voluptuous. _

_Only as he eased himself slowly into her did she draw up her knees to cradle his hips between her thighs. She moaned softly, tasting her own secret essence on his lips as he fused his mouth with hers once more; his tongue mimicking the slight forward and back motions of his sex as he made only tiny incremental movements, glorying in the sensations of her, hot and wet and slick from their earlier passion, clenching tightly around him, so eager and ready for him, and finally he released his male power…_

_He had never had such a powerful or lengthy orgasm, he was swallowed whole and willing by the indescribable ecstasy of being able to feel __**everything**__; no hateful barrier between his flesh and hers, only the sweetness of pure __**sensation **__in every tiniest contraction of her inner muscles around his engorged, throbbing sex, every micro-ripple as she climaxed again and again and again squeezing him rapturously as he surged into her powerfully over and over in joyous unconstraint, without restriction, breaching the very centre of her being, thrusting and pounding and pumping, pumping, pumping his seed into her womb in endless scalding spurts until he teetered on the verge of blacking out from the sheer pressure of his release, riding her hard and wild as a stallion as she screamed and screamed his name again from the sheer force of climax and climax and climax, taking all of him, every inch of his rapturously bare, raw sex, buried to the hilt inside her, faint pulses of her orgasms still faintly squeezing him, and he __**knew **__that she was utterly, irrevocably __**his**__…_

And he'd made her pregnant.

It was the only time that night he had sheathed himself in her without him being sheathed in a condom. Incredible, that neither of them had realised at the time what they'd done; but neither had been in any fit state to do anything but _breathe_; no wonder the French called orgasm _le petit mort, _'the little death'.

There were no words that hadn't seemed too crass, too pointless. He had remained sheathed within the tight, silken delight of her body as they drifted into an exhausted asleep unashamedly entwined in each other's arms, and Dean's last thought had been a determination that when she woke again, he would ensure that the 'cold light of day' would be, even if only for that day, the warm, bright promise of spring.

And he had. He'd woken instantly as she stirred and gave him that not-quite-with-it sleepy smile; he'd kept it light but non-negotiable in his declaration that it was a three-step programme: shower, breakfast, him driving her home. They'd showered together and then it was her mouth and fingers doing the suckling and kissing and pleasuring and his doing the gasping and begging and chanting of her name, before they managed to get dressed and leave. They never _did_ get around to finding her stockings.

The leer on the desk clerk's face was wiped off at the ferocious glare Dean gave him and he retreated, cowed, to his back room; he was forgotten instantly as Dean drove them to the diner near the bar where _she _had picked _him _up -

_Some young puppy, his face an open mixture of judgemental contempt and vulgar lust, had swaggered up to the booth, ogling at her, "Wh'dyawant?"_

"_For you to take yourself as far away from here as possible and send over the wait-__**ress,**__" Dean snarled in rage._

_The kid took one look at the guy in the leather hipster and primordial instincts warned that this was a full-grown predator with __**all **__the fangs and claws; he never heard Dean growling in very lion-like satisfaction as he scuttled away with wide eyes and a blanched face for the safety of the kitchen as the older, more experienced waitress stepped in, being careful not to look at Lisa with any 'opinion' showing on her face – though this was no pair of overly hormonal adolescents; this was a full-grown man who was decisively laying claim to his mate and warning off all rivals._

_As the woman walked away from taking their order for two breakfast specials and coffees, Lisa looked at him with twinkling eyes still bright from the adrenaline of their love making, "Would you like to go cave-hunting later?"_

"_Haven't these people ever heard of Women's Lib?" Dean groused. "They look at you like you're a woman in white –"_

"_What?"_

"_Like you're a combo of Norma Bates and Debbie doing Dallas," he hastily amended, "but all __**I**__ get are winks and you-sly-dog smirks." It was the first time he'd noticed the disparate and hypocritical reactions to __**him**__ following his customary nightly activities and the response meted out to the woman he'd been with. To his surprise, however, Lisa smiled back at him. _

"_That sort of hypocrisy has existed in every culture and society since, well, ever." She leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner, clearly unaware of the excellent view it gave him of her plump, delicious breasts. "It got __**me **__thrown out of Sunday School."_

"_What? You?" he raised both eyebrows in disbelief._

"_Uh-huh." Clearly delighted at her own juvenile scandal, she related, "I was about nine, I guess. We had this visiting preacher – really heavy on the sins of the flesh stuff. We got to this part of Genesis where one of the twelve sons of Jacob – Judah I think – got his daughter-in-law Tamar* pregnant; he thought she was a hooker and didn't recognise her, which, hey, shows how much time he spent actually looking at her __**face,**__the creep."_

"_What did you do?" he asked with interest after the waitress brought their order and left; his stomach began to rumble appreciatively at the promise of eggs and biscuits and meaty goodness. _

"_He laid it on with a trowel about bad, bad Tamar, and then asked us kiddies what we thought, and I stood up and said it was totally bogus. I mean, __**Judah**__ makes all the running in the are-you-a-hooker-can-I-get-some stakes in the __**first**__ place, but it's __**Tamar**__ and her unborn kid they go straight to drag out and burn? If she hadn't had the brains to keep some of his stuff, she'd have been toast, literally, yet nobody seems to have been bothered about the male sinner."_

"_I bet that went down well." He added several spoons of sugar to his coffee to boost his energy levels._

"_Like a lead dumpling. I was thrown out after I refused to recant my opinion that it was typical patriarchal double-standards and they ought to have been tying Mr Can't Keep His Kit In His Pants __**Judah**__ to the stake and stacking the kindling."_

_He couldn't help but laugh as she got stuck in to her food gleefully, obviously relishing every bite of the sausage and bacon and eggy goodness. A woman who __**didn't**__ aspire to look like a coat-hanger on legs and who __**didn't **__act as if eating anything other than two leaves of lettuce was the equivalent of stuffing your face with a Big Mac™ every hour on the hour? Could she be any more fabulous? Apparently she could, because even as he chuckled and reached for his mug, a fork slyly slid across the Formica towards the crispy strips of bacon temptingly near the edge of his plate…_

"_Hey!" he batted her fork away; he mock-glared, steeling himself against the her exaggeratedly widened innocent-eyes and what was meant to be a soulful pout that was enhanced by her lips still being swollen from his kisses; the overall effect however, was ruined by the dancing laughter in her eyes and the way her lips kept curving upwards in a smile, and he noted the roguishly determined expression on her face as she held the fork, clearly poised for any opening._

_It made his chest hurt as he suddenly realised why the moment was so familiar. When he'd been a toddler, before Sam was even conceived, dad used to cook plenty of breakfast for himself and mom every Saturday, but always seemed to __**then **__prefer the food on mom's plate. When mom was distracted with the paper or trying to feed Dean, dad tried to sneak a strip of bacon or a biscuit, which resulted in the weekly duel of the forks. Clear as day he remembered how one Saturday mom had thrown back her head and howled with laughter as Dean, waiting for daddy to get distracted by trying to steal from mommy, simply reached out one chubby hand and filched the nearest bit of bacon from daddy's plate and stuffed it into his mouth. Mom had crowed about the 'biter bit!' and daddy had politely declined the offer of the return of the squished, slightly chewed and drool-covered bacon. _

_Lost in the moment, he came back to the now just as she waggled her fork with her stolen prize of sausage into front of his face; before he could retaliate she popped one end between those luscious lips and bit down with her small white teeth, before chewing with grinning gusto at him. His body tightened anew, fresh and fierce with desire and desperate longing, and he knew he would never tire of claiming her fire and her passion…_

_Continued in Chapter 17…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

* Author's note:

The account of Judah, son of Jacob & Leah and Tamar (meaning 'Palm Tree') is in the Bible at Genesis Chapter 38; interestingly, the Bible itself does not condemn Tamar's actions, whereas Judah does not come out at all well from the account.

Judah moved to Canaan and married a Canaanitess, by whom he had 3 sons, Er and Onan, and a few years later, Shelah. As customary, he arranged a marriage between Er and Tamar, whom it seems was not a Canaanite but probably a niece of Judah through his assorted siblings (Jacob had 2 wives, Leah & Rachel and two concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah, and a total of 33 children – 12 sons and 21 daughters).

However, God had promised Jacob that the Messiah or Christ would be a descendent of his son, Judah, but Er was a wicked man and as firstborn technically he had the right of ancestry of Christ. Therefore, God caused his death before he could impregnate Tamar. Although the Law of Moses didn't yet exist and wouldn't for nearly two centuries more, the custom of brother-in-law marriage (where the brother of a childless man married the man's widow and their sons were considered his brother's heirs) was common in the area, so Judah had Onan marry Tamar. Onan, however, was a selfish man who had no consideration for the legacy of his dead brother, and whenever he had sex with Tamar he withdrew before ejaculation and 'wasted' his sperm (onanism, onanist and onanistic, as in relating to self-masturbation rather than sexual intercourse with a woman, comes from is derived from Onan). Again, as surviving eldest son, Onan would have been Christ's ancestor.

Judah had Tamar live a widow in her family home whilst waiting for Shelah to achieve an age to marry. In the intervening years, Judah's wife also died. Tamar realised that Shelah was old enough to sire offspring, but Judah was not fulfilling the requirements of brother-in-law custom. At this time, Shelah would have been about 14-17 and Tamar about 25-29 years of age (assuming she was in her mid-late teens when she married Er). Realising that unless she took direct action she was approaching an age when conception would be more difficult (her 30s), Tamar disguised herself as a temple prostitute** and Judah, seeing her on the road, stopped and requested sex. Tamar, prudently, took surety from him in the items of his seal ring and others, before acquiescing. Afterwards, Tamar returned home and redressed as a widow. Unable to find the temple prostitute, Judah likewise went home.

Three months later, Tamar's pregnancy was obvious, and reported to Judah. Since his daughter-in-law was technically Shelah's wife and therefore an adulteress, he ordered her stoned to death and the corpse burned. However, Tamar sent him the seal ring etc and requested he examine them to reveal the father. Judah prevented her execution, admitting that he had been in the wrong. As the head of the family, it had been his responsibility to ensure her marriage to Shelah was consummated, but he had clearly failed – he had obviously never made any attempt to progress the marriage in the previous three months else Tamar would have been able to pass her pregnancy off as Shelah's baby. It was Tamar who ensured that Judah's lineage continued to have heirs by effectively performing brother-in-law marriage with Judah in place of Shelah. The eldest of her twin sons by Judah, Perez, was the ancestor of Jesus Christ, not Shelah, the son of Judah's marriage.

** In many ancient cultures prostitutes were religious figures; male and female prostitutes of heterosexual and homosexual activity lived or worked near certain temples of gods and goddesses associated with sex and agriculture worship. Though paid for sex just like today, these were not considered sinners or adulterers, but rather a sort of de facto priest/priestess. The ancient Israelites were forbidden to use or allow such prostitutes to operate in Israel because of Israelite monotheism and the preferred status of monogamous marriage (one husband & one wife) though polygamy was tolerated rather than encouraged. A beneficial side-effect of this was an extremely low occurrence of various venereal diseases such as Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, Chlamidya, cervical, anal and penile cancers, and the social problems caused when female prostitutes had children whose fathers could not be ascertained and husbands could not be sure their 'heir' wasn't the son of a male prostitute his wife had used.


	17. Chapter 17

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 17**

There was the faintest rustle and Dean nearly bit his tongue as a tiny vole-thing skittered away from him at speed.

He cursed himself silently but comprehensively. An entire vampire nest accompanied by an honour guard of wendigous and a shtriga brass brand could have sneaked up and surrounded his wool-gathering ass whilst he was wandering around out here away with the fairies – not to mention the fact that his little unintended detour down memory lane had left him fully aroused and throbbing with his remembered desire; back that morning he would have given anything for a completely empty diner; to flip the minx on her back on that booth seat, shove that maddening mini-dress up off her hips and mount her hard and fast like he was one of the Impala's pistons…

Lisa would have let him too; her glowing eyes had him told she was following his thoughts in Technicolor and that sly smirk she'd given him as she'd slowly and oh-so-deliberately nibbled that sausage telegraphed that she would have wrapped those legs round his waist tight as a vice and let him pound her through the seat.

_Oww, oww_, _way to go genius_, keep thinking like _that _and double the pain factor to serious hurting, given how little – how _no_ - room there was to move in these jeans. He couldn't even take a step without swollen anatomy being mercilessly scrunched, never mind fight off something if that vole turned out to be a rabid rougarou in disguise.

Okay, focus…For a second he allowed himself to concentrate on a memory from the pit and…yep, instant wilt. Blowing out a breath he gingerly rearranged himself.

But, those memories only _confirmed_ to him that he _was _Ben's father. Right from her tentative approach to him in the bar that night, it had been clear to Dean that he had been Lisa's first new bed partner in some considerable time. The notion that she had used their night of passion as the 'starting gun' for some sort of 'slutathon' resulting in another or even several other candidates for Ben's paternity was ludicrous. She was too bright – and too responsible.

Lisa could have had an abortion, but she had been brave enough to have her baby. It _was_ brave too, considering where she lived. By some mutual unspoken simpatico, they had kept things light and witty; he had not attempted to elicit what had caused her so much anguish and distress that she had contemplated taking her own life, never mind led to her folly in deciding to pick up some complete stranger in a bar, though her nervousness had telegraphed it was not, mercifully, something she did regularly or at all.

After breakfast, he'd driven her back to _her _rather more upscale hotel, and she'd tenderly kissed his cheek, whispering a soft but resolute, _Goodbye, Dean_. He'd parked the too distinctive Impala around the corner, then hailed a cab and waited until she came out, and told his guy to follow that cab. The guy had bought his tale of her being stalked by a nasty ex and her knowing that 'I'm back here so we can hopefully witness the scuzz in the act'.

Morning Hill had only been two towns over, and he'd let his cab go and caught another back once he'd watched Lisa go into her house – nice, neat, the epitome of suburban middle-class America. Morning Hill was also Small Town, USA, and Small Town USA was notoriously disapproving of young, beautiful, unwed mothers – but Lisa had clearly never moved to the non-judgmental anonymity of a city. Between balancing her career and single motherhood, it was unlikely that Lisa had ever put Ben to bed and then gone out road testing the local stud muffins. In all probability – at least his hitherto unsuspected but _waaay_ possessive and jealous streak hoped – he was _still_ the most recent lover Lisa been with.

And intelligence, and responsibility and bravery had been _why _she'd looked him in the eye and unflinchingly flat-out lied to him that he _wasn't _Ben's father, because she _got_ the essence of him instinctively in a way that Cassie never had. Although at the time he'd been with Lisa he was still smarting from the fallout of Cassie's rejection, something inside had urged him to try again with Lisa, to follow her into the hotel and tell her what he was really about.

Oh, he'd known that she wouldn't believe him, any more than Cassie had, but some deep instinct was sure that the _attitude _would be poles apart. Cassie had immediately impugned wrong motives, jumped to negative conclusions and angrily thrown him out because of what she'd simply 'assumed' to be his 'real' agenda. But somehow he had just known that he could persuade Lisa to stay with him for a few days, and in that few days his claims could be proven. Indeed, only moments after he had watched her disappear into the hotel lobby, his cell phone had rung with a message from dad for Dean to meet up with Caleb and Jefferson and the three of them to intersect with dad for a big wendigou hunt in the Smokies. For the first time ever, he'd heard himself tell his father that he couldn't make the hunt due to being tied up 'on another hunt' in Cicero, Indiana, and he'd call him in a few days.

But after living through the horror of the changelings, Lisa had grasped instantly the _reality_ of Dean's life. She'd understood that many innocent people – children - would lose their lives if Dean were not out on the road, helping people, saving people, and she'd also understood how much he would beat himself up about being a stereotypical 'deadbeat' absentee dad doing it if she told him the truth, so she'd put the greater good before her own wants, and lied to give Dean the absolution he needed to do his job.

It still didn't make it hurt any less. Just like his Uncle Sam, Ben would never have those precious 'mom and dad moment' memories, like Dean had of dad and mom and the breakfast stealing incident. Unlike Sam, Ben had no brother to at least partly make up for that lack. It was more likely than not that some other…what was that pathetic politically correct phrase…'male role model'…would do for Ben what John, for all his faults, had done for Dean in teaching him vehicle mechanics, and fishing, and all the other father-son stuff that little boys should be able to do with their dads; stuff that Dean in turn had taught Sam.

_He's editing…what other facts have apparently slipped Castiel's celestial mind_…Sam's words momentarily echoed so clearly he jumped a little and for the first time gave Dean pause. He still didn't understand – or quite believe – how come _he_ had been deemed oh-so-worthy of the free-pass-from-the-pit card, but maybe a lot of things he'd never connected up _were _part of some celestial long game?

_After all, get your ducks in a row here, Dean…_(a) he would always have a profound and eternal connection to Lisa Braidan, in the form of their son; (b) of all the women he'd 'been' with (including more than one whose name, to his shame, he couldn't remember), when he'd accepted the reality of The Deal being his death, Lisa was the first, last and only name that had popped straight back into his nostalgic brain, not Cassie or anyone else; (c) Lisa had been the only woman he'd ever been so far gone with that he hadn't used a condom, and she'd been the one who'd made that awesome commitment and borne his child when she could have gotten rid of it without anyone ever knowing, (d), Dean had got the urge to look up his old girlfriend at just the same time as when she and their son were in mortal danger, (f) saving her and Ben had given Dean a glimpse 'into the potential', _of what could be_.

If they could beat Lillith, if he could he make it, if…something more than the prospect of endless, empty years of an eternal road trip, with Dean unable to learn how to do anything else and Sam eventually giving in to his pining for the non-hunter life, the pining that had driven Mary Campbell – a.k.a. mom – so intensely herself. Yes, mom had loved dad, but a big part of the attraction had been his total lack of any hunter lineage or connections; it wasn't lost on Dean that Sam and Ruby hadn't become lovers until after she'd left her original host and picked that sultry brunette Jane Doe antithesis of the buxom corn-fed blondeness that had been Jessica Lee Moore. Maybe that was significant; Dean had been unable to break his deal or survive Lillith, but Lisa and Ben and the potential future 'family life' they represented had been part of having a reason to _hope_.

Maybe that had been why he'd felt that nostalgic urge, because one thing no amount of heavenly choirs or angelic visitations was ever going to make Dean Winchester believe in was _coincidence_. The best lover he'd ever had _happened _to be the only woman he'd ever not used a condom with, though only once? And that once just _happened _to be at the right time to get her pregnant? She also just _happened _to be the one with courage to ride out the condemnation and step up to the tough task of being a single mother? He just _happened _to get all rose-tinted-spectacles about that particular one-night-stand he'd deliberately kept from his wistful memories right when Mama changeling and her hell spawn were getting ready to use Morning Hill as an all-you-can-eat-buffet, and his woman and his child were on the menu _du jour_?

But he'd jettisoned that hope, down _there_. He'd been so determined that Alistair would not know of any other targets to torture, not be aware that he could hurt Dean a thousand times more than any physical torture by going after those that Dean loved. Day after day Dean had ruthlessly shut down and shut out any thoughts of Sam, and Bobby, and Lisa and Ben, and Ellen and anyone else he felt the slightest affection for.

And day after day Alistair had ground him down a little further, pushed him a tiny fraction closer to the edge, and after thirty years, he'd fallen. But like someone had once said, _There's no point in making it to your Paradise if the people you're doing it all for aren't there_. Had he been 'nudged' back to Lisa _because _her and Ben being part of his 'greater hope' had been intended to sustain him during his imprisonment and torture, to help keep him resolute until it was decided that it was time for Castiel to metaphorically yank him out of the pit by the scruff of his neck?

_In which case, a heads up would have been nice! You managed the Bible – sixty-six books in four languages over fifteen hundred years - but 'Being a Warrior of God For Dummies' was a bridge too far?_

He wasn't sure who or what or if _anything _he was directing the complaint to, but he hoped _something _was taking the critique on board –

"Dean! Here!" Sam's voice was low but carrying – and urgent.

_Continued in Chapter 18…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	18. Chapter 18

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 18**

Giving himself a brisk, sub-vocal get-your-head-out-of-your-ass pep talk, Dean immediately moved to where he could see Sam at the furthest edge of the parking lot, which wasn't surprising.

Tense from their _sotto voce_ argument than any actual trepidation, they had nonetheless moved in their usual silent concert towards the main doors, but they had seen a couple of silhouettes briefly through the frosted panes in the upper halves of the wood. Without needing to confer or exchange even look, they had moved round to the back past the industrial-size dumpsters and slipped into through the side door into the empty kitchen; making sure the door outside was firmly shut they had edged their way up the corridor to the main lobby, which by then was empty again.

Fortunately it seemed the majority were still contained in the ballroom or the walled garden, though a rattling from the balcony above the lobby showed Sam's wisdom in using his belt to secure the upstairs exit from the ballroom. Then Sam had whispered that he had an idea. They'd had to dodge an Egyptian mummy and a giant, rather mangy werewolf that had stumbled disconsolately through the lobby in quick succession, but Sam had sneaked into the back office again and returned with a plastic tube of SQ-EASY paper glue. With Dean keeping watch, Sam bounded up the stairs, and set about well and truly gunging up the lock of Room 11. It wouldn't _stop _the guest getting in, but it would slow him or her down, which was the best they could hope for.

Knowing they could get back in the kitchen side door, they'd slipped out the main doors and Dean had locked them. By unspoken consent or in silent discord, depending on which you preferred to pick, Dean had automatically gone one way and Sam the other as they separated out, looking for any signs of whatever had worked the bad mojo on the hotel's guests. As Bobby had told Dean, not even a Trickster could have just 'phoned in his performance' from any great distance for this show.

This spot, the furthermost point from the hotel, in a cater-cornered part of the parking lot was further obscured by a line of trees that blocked the view from most of the hotel's windows, even if that person eschewed a casual glance in favour of pulling up a chair and indulging in some proper peeking.

"What do you think?" Sam gestured at his find.

To the ordinary glance, it looked like a campfire. About a dozen or so unhewn rocks, each about the size of a football, had been picked up and placed, touching, in a circle with a diameter of about two feet across. Within the circle was a mound of ash and partially burnt wood, plus some white, cracked shards that were clearly bones. However, the person looking at the 'campsite' might then notice how the inside of each rock had a crude mark or symbol scrawled on it in some sort of charcoal or black chalk and each also had splashes of some stain that even in the dark looked more red than black and which neither brother thought might be fruit juice.

"Looks like we're two for two," Dean admitted, taking a nearby stick and crouching down, raking through the detritus carefully. "Blood and Death."

_Unless…_The three most powerful rites were death, blood and sex; the ending of life, the source of life and the act of perpetuating life. Each alone enabled powerful and often unpleasant mystic wackiness to ensue, so to combine any two or all three…like with Ruby, in the aftermath of their fight in Santa Fe*…he'd been close to the edge of his release anyway, and it had been merely instinct that had drawn his attention to that tiny bead of blood on her lip where one of them had bitten in passion, to reflexively lick the dot – that single droplet had exploded on his tongue in fizzing, popping euphoria and his climax had blasted and roared through every cell of him in a seething maelstrom –

He, Sam Winchester, had _fainted_. Not blacked out, not passed out, not any of those macho phrases guys insisted on using. For five or six seconds he had fainted from OD'ing on sheer sexual ecstasy. But Ruby, even though his wild throes of passion had bodily shoved her over a foot up the bed, had initially been sceptical until he'd thought to express his experience in the analogy of nitro and glycerine – two potent but perfectly manageable compounds individually, put them together and you got a burst of energy far greater than the sum of the component parts.

And it hadn't been a one-hit wonder, either…no way could they keep doing it more than very occasionally, but it had been so…_primal_…he hadn't been able to resist when she'd pulled out that little flick knife and opened a vein at her wrist for him – but he _had _seen the shadows in Ruby's eyes, so he had stopped her lying down, and instead sat cuddling her on his lap while he licked the tiny wound; it was important for him that she knew she was more than just a convenient food/sex toy to him. Still, the memory of Santa Fe was seared into his memory, so the next time he hadn't been able to resist asking her permission to taste her life whilst he was claiming her, and incredibly it had been even better – now when they did it, knowing what to expect meant he was able to maintain his control, he could channel the surging, spinning energy to please both of them…and it had done _wonders _for his stamina. Climax of five seconds now lasted twenty and he could hold Ruby at her peak of pleasure, riding her slowly and watching her avidly as she climaxed beneath him in abandon…

Of course he and Ruby weren't your _normal _couple by any stretch of any imagination, but if any Joe Average could get his self something even _half _as good as what Sam had experienced…Sam finally got _why _Evil types immediately started kidnapping the nearest virgin and hunting out the heirloom ceremonial dagger – if that was what you got with just _one_ drop of blood and _one_ spoon of sperm, combining at the moment of sexual orgasm, an en masse orgy/blood letting/sacrifice combo would be _thermonuclear_ –

"I _said, _'unless what'?" Dean was looking up at him and speaking with the exasperation of someone who has already repeated himself.

"Um…I was thinking…unless…it would be three for three if the guy…y'know? Cut them, then jacked off over them before he lit them?"

"And the Brain-Stabbing Imagery returns for a sell out tour." Dean screwed up his face.

"I'm sorry," Sam spoke with genuine contrition, because, well, it _was _simply _gross._

"But you're probably right." Wrinkling his nose, Dean held his hand, palm downwards, outstretched over the centre of the circle but nowhere close to touching it. "Warm air's still rising from the embers. The fire's not long been out."

"The bones?" Sam appealed, remembering only too well the Rising of Samhain and Ron Hardy's appalling collection of babies' bones in his desk drawer.

Using his unscathed and sturdy twig, Dean stirred through some of the detritus. "Rabbit, and chicken. An amateur anyway; sacrificed them for the blood splashes then made the fire too hot too fast to burn everything properly."

"Great."

Dean got Sam's worried mutter; these 'unholy trinity' rites of blood letting, ritual sex act and killing were always (a) very powerful and (b) usually very, very bad for anything with the fallout range – and one conducted by some overconfident amateur would only make those factors so much worse, like that kid who had used real arcane lore to get those dead movie people to kill for him, then screwed up and broke the obedience amulet, meaning Dean and Sam had been unable to prevent the enraged spirits slaughtering him.

Dean peered closer as he spotted something not animal. "Uh oh…we got some sort of burned plants here too. I think…Barberry…

"Provokes conflict, bitterness and arguments."

For a moment Dean wondered if they could blame their own internecine conflict with each other on the herb, but though very powerful, barberry was very limited in range – you had to sprinkle some in every room of a house you wanted to turn to discord for example, because the whammy only worked in a radius of about two feet.

He made a soft whistle. "Damn, I think we got ourselves an entire herbalist store here…cinnamon and benzoin mix…" a mixture used to intensify whatever dubious enchantment was intended. "Cloves to add oomph, cinquefoil for more intensity to the hex, oak leaves, hawthorn leaves and…what d'y'reckon this is?"

"I think…ash tree leaf? No idea what they'd be for." Sam admitted.

"Er…vervain, whoa – chopped mandrake root – "

"As if the blood and probably gross masturbation wasn't bad enough."

"And…_basil_?"

"Isn't basil the herb you sprinkle over your sleeping lover to ensure faithfulness and that they'll only ever be sexually interested in you?" Sam asked in confusion.

"Yeah," Dean nodded automatically; he'd have given a great deal that long-gone night with Lisa to have had some basil on him…_focus now, Dean, fantasise later_… "Maybe our budding homicidal horticulturalist made a mistake."

There was the tiniest, barely audible _snick_ of a twig being rustled; with smooth lightning-speed both Dean and Sam surged up and swung their shotguns – to point several feet _left_ of that telltale noise.

"Twitch, and die." advised Dean.

A gravel-voiced chuckle floated out of the darkness and a humanoid shape moved very slowly and carefully forward. The shape was a tall but stooped man with iron-grey hair, pure white hair, brown eyes and a superficial resemblance to Colonel Potter in the M*A*S*H TV show; he was dressed in polished black boots, black pants, and a shirt and jacket with a…red silk cravat?

He also toted a sawn-off shotgun in one hand and an impressively modern looking Glock-17 in the other; after giving them a comprehensive once-over he slipped the handgun into the back of his waistband in a gesture that Sam had seen Dean do a million times.

"You got any name other than Chuckles?" Dean sassed, not dropping his guard or his gun one iota.

"Yup. Name's Joe Briddon – that's eye-double-dee-oh-en. And you pair are Teddy Campbell's great-nephews, the Winchester brothers, though I can't recollect your names right now."

Dean and Sam exchanged astonished glances at that name. "You knew…Edward Campbell?" Sam clarified suspiciously.

"Forty years ago, Ted Campbell was my best friend, and my brother-in-law. He married my sister, Mary Briddon."

"Mary," Dean repeated the name.

"Sure, you reckon _Samuel _and _Deanna _Campbell just plucked Mary outta the cosmic ether?" Briddon pointed out. "Deanna was Mary's friend, and incidentally our cousin. Sam met her through Ted and Mary."

"I have no memory of my mother, I never knew her," Sam stated bluntly, "and unless you have any photographs that can verify what you say, if it's…forty years…since, you can't be sure who we are – and vice versa."

Dean was tensed but Joe appeared singularly unmoved by the suspicious reception. "Son, I don't need any photos, and neither do you." He nodded at Sam, "You want to know what Teddy looked like in his frisky and free youth, all _you_ have to do is check the nearest mirror."

"I resemble Ted Campbell?" Sam resisted the urge to look down at himself as if checking he hadn't sprouted a new limb.

"Resemble, yeah, like one pea in a pod resembles another." Briddon quipped. "Now short-stuff here…don't place your face, but those green eyes…Deanna's pappy, Dean Colt had eyes just that shade."

"Colt…as in Samuel Colt?"

"Sure, he had only one legitimate surviving child, Caldwell," Joe shrugged*, "but he lived a might wild in his youth, if you follow me. Deanna was related to him somewhere along the line. I remember Teddy mentioning it when Mary started sparkin' your Daddy, John Winchester, 'cause he was related to Oliver Winchester, of the rifles."

"You're a hunter?" Dean challenged, taking in the natty ensemble.

"I _was _a hunter taking the night off to visit a good friend," Joe said with a definite smirk.

"Oh yeah, can _she _vouch for that?" Dean didn't smirk in reply.

"A gentleman does not bandy a woman's name…" Joe said loftily, "…and don't we have more pressing concerns than the unfortunate crimp in _my_ sex life?"

"And we're back to the brain-stabbing imagery," Dean muttered.

Joe snorted, "Why, 'cause I'm about 25 years old tripled? You kids think you invented wild living? A woman don't even come into her _prime_ until she's 40, you young bucks are washed up at 25, which is great for guys like me."

Dean's eyes narrowed and Sam intervened hastily as he tried desperately to shut out the vision of Dean accepting the advances of every "cougar" – the derogative nickname given to middle-aged women who bedded younger men – going from now on; although, if _women _really didn't reach their sexual peak until their 40s and _men_ were on the downward slide by 27, the imbalance had to be corrected somehow…_Oh so, __**so**__ not going there…_ "We've got extra weapons in the car, we'd welcome your help."

Unless of course Briddon was the _cause _of the calamity, but it didn't seem likely that he'd be wandering around here so cavalierly with an angel – technically two angels – less than a hundred yards away.

_Continued in Chapter 19…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

* Because this story is already long enough, I have written Sam and Ruby's incident in Santa Fe as a Sam/Ruby one-shot, _**Give and Take**_. It is not necessary to read that to follow this story, and vice versa.

* Author's note: Samuel Colt (1814-1862) had only one surviving legitimate child, Caldwell Colt; his nephew John Caldwell Colt, whom persistent rumour claimed as his bastard son by a German mistress, was most likely the son of his brother, John Colt. Whether the producers chose Mitch Pileggi, who played Colonel _Caldwell_ on Stargate: Atlantis, to play the role of _Samuel _Campbell as some sort of referential in-joke is not known.


	19. Chapter 19

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 19**

Finally Dean put up the shotgun but he and Sam both dropped back a step with Joe walking centre and slightly ahead of them to cover him. He could claim kinship to them all he wanted, because there was no proof – all such photographs and documents had burned in the inferno the night Azazel murdered their mother.

Joe slowed as he spotted the figure next to the rear door of the Impala on the driver's side. "Who're your friends?"

Friend-_z_?

Another familiar figure was standing near to Castiel, a big, bald black man, with his arms folded across his chest, delineating the solid bulge of his biceps – or rather, the biceps of Uriel's host.

Sam shot Dean a withering look. "Just the peanut gallery."

Dean winced; the only way tonight could get any _worse _was if Alistair and Lillith showed up arm in arm and jonesing for a little mayhem.

Uriel made a slight movement and Dean –

"_Don't!_"

Dean, Joe and even Castiel jumped slightly at Sam's bark; even Uriel stiffened.

The glare lasering from Sam's eyes should have sliced even Uriel in two. "Just don't. Because whilst I get the _irony _of a ragingly anti-human _bigot_ body-jacking an _African-American _meat-suit, right now, I don't care enough for it to matter." He yanked up the trunk lid violently. "Stay out our way, stay quiet, and guard mini Della Reese while _we_ fix this mess."

Joe had stopped dead in his tracks right at 'body-jacking' and swung up his shotgun. "They're _possessed_?"

"Kinda," Dean admitted.

"How 'kinda' specifically?" Joe was now covering Uriel, Castiel, and Dean within the blast range of his shotgun.

Sam gave a loud, exaggerated sigh. "They're. _Angels._" He enunciated the words as if admitting the pair were Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin in disguise.

Joe raised both eyebrows. "As in…"

"Della Reese and Roma Downey've never been near their 'hood, but yeah…wings, et cetera. He – " Dean indicated Castiel, "is actually tolerable in _veeeery small_ doses – him…" he shrugged, "…not so much, he's a workaholic."

"And that's a… _bad_ thing… for an angel to be?"

Dean couldn't help but note that Joe seemed to be taking something that most other hunters would have freaked completely over, completely in his stride. Trouble was, he had no idea if _that _was a good or bad thing.

"When your job is to _immolate _whole towns en masse, _I'd_ say so," Sam had got their dad's journal from the trunk.

"Sodom and Gomorrah?" Joe asked Uriel conversationally, not fazed in the slightest when the angel's face remained a blank mask. "Twenty-four thousand on the plains of Moab?"

"Twenty-what?" Dean repeated, certain he'd heard wrong.

Joe raised his eyebrows again – something that had instantly made it to the top of Dean's 'Other People's Irritating Habits' list. "It's all there in Exodus boys. Those ridiculous little babies with fluffy wings have never been within a mile of the Good Book. From Genesis to Revelation – all route 66 books - the angelic hosts have been Warriors of God – the war hosts of Revelation and the prophet Elisha in Second Kings, 'war chariots of fire'? One angel slaughtered 185,000 Assyrians in one night, and the two cherubs who had to guard the way back into Eden for 1500 years from fallen angels – demons - and hyped-up hybrid humans – you reckon _those _boys were seven-stone weaklings?"

"Demons are humans gone bad." Sam corrected, engaging despite himself.

"_Most _demons are humans gone bad _now_, but the _first demons_, the 'founding population', that's a different kind of animal altogether…it's the difference between tabby cats and man-eating tigers…those boys were all angels who went as bad as you can get, which for an angel…I don't think any human is capable of imagining it."

"You're not," Uriel rumbled, a faint overtone of satisfaction, and – perhaps – a soupcon of tolerance for Joe in his voice.

"Well the objective here is to _save _the nice, innocent, helpless people, not have a giant barbeque," Sam snapped. "Feel free to help me see if there's anything like those creepy symbols in dad's journal any time this year, Dean."

Joe actually chuckled, a genuine belly laugh that seemed to surprise Uriel and Castiel as much as it did Dean and Sam. "Boy, you _are_ Teddy reborn. He used to get so snippy…and you don't need to go pawing through that book, _I_ can tell you what did this. You're looking for the Faerie."

There was a heartbeat of silence, then another.

"Fairies?" Dean asked with conversational interest, in the same tone you used to talked to very young children and the demented elderly.

"Not fairies eff-ay-iy-ar-iy-ee-ess, _the _faerie, eff-ay-ee-ar-iy-ee…and son, you speak to me in _that _tone again and I'll drop kick your ass past a week Tuesday."

Dean's eyes met Sam's – _Fairies? You ever…?_

_No… but then we thought vampires were extinct too, didn't we, and look how that turned out._

_Good point._

Dean weighed up Joe, who seemed completely unsurprised that the two younger men had been able to conduct an entire conversation with an exchange of glances. "What exactly is '_the _Faerie'?"

"For a start forget all that Disney crap – and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Enid Blyton, Shakespeare and anyone else who drivels on about wee gossamer winged folk dancing round toadstool rings at the bottom of your garden. And _don't _get me started on the whole Peter Pan thing – the real Tinkerbell was a cheerfully sadistic psychopath whose favourite MO was to lure babies and toddlers out of upper-storey nurseries by encouraging them to try and fly like her and then laughing as they plummeted three and four storeys to their deaths."

"She dead?" asked Dean with definitely _more_ than casual enquiry in his tone.

"As a can o'spam. Got skewered like a kebab sometime around 1850, I think."

"Why would the Faerie -?" Sam gestured at the hotel at a loss for words to adequately describe it.

Joe gave them a measuring glance. "The answer to that is a question. What would happen to supernatural things – most of the things we hunt – if the human beings on this rock were to become extinct?"

Dean frowned slightly, aware that _not a lot _was probably not the right answer, but -

Sam's face got a look that meant either something had clicked or he'd just eaten a particularly potent burrito. "It would be disastrous," he blurted.

"Why?" Joe challenged.

"Everything we hunt either _eats_ humans, was _once_ human or _needs_ humans…as a place to live."

Dean winced inwardly as Sam rather obviously _didn't _look at Castiel or Uriel. _Careful Sammy, I don't know - yet - how to kill an angel; I can't back you up if you're stupid enough to goad Uriel too far…_

"Go on," Joe encouraged.

"Everything we hunt would be wiped out," Sam shrugged, "things that eat people, like wendigous and vampires, would starve to mass extinction; things that were people or need them to replenish their populations, like vampires and demons would become extinct, things that need people to live within, like ghosts and demons and…other things…would be unable to manifest."

"You're absolutely right," Joe confirmed, "and completely wrong."

_Continued in Chapter 20…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	20. Chapter 20

NB – To all readers; I apologise for the delay in posting, but my hard drive was corrupted two weeks ago and I lost dozens of files with hundreds of pages of stories, articles and texts. I have managed to retrieve about 70 percent of my losses, more or less, but I'm afraid I have had to retype this story from Chapter 20 onwards from memory so it's been a bit slow going; I have also completely lost two other Supernatural stories, Hollywood North and Peace after War, one of which was 48 pages long of notes, vignettes and 'scene-shots' to expand. I'm trying to get everything back down "on screen" while I can remember it all, so please bear with me.

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 20**

Fortunately, Joe seemed to realise that Dean had very limited reserves of patience and almost 'zero tolerance' for Cryptic, and he elaborated, "All that's true, but there are quite a few weird and wacky things out there that _aren't _dependent on humanity, and the Faerie happen to be one of 'em."

"How?" Dean challenged.

Joe shrugged. "Ironically, for all their cheerfully sadistic homicidal mania, the Faerie are veggies – no man meat needed for them. They're also sexual sadists who reproduce like demented rabbits on steroids and their preferred 'des res' are crystal quartz caves. If humans happened to vacant the tenancy of this rather lovely third rock from the sun, the Faerie would move in tomorrow. And some believe they almost pulled it off once before –"

"What do you mean, once before?" Sam knew better than to hope that a hunter of Joe's age and obvious years of experience had _exaggerated_ his character assassination of the Faerie.

"There've always been demon scholars as well as hunters-" Joe shrugged.

"_Prehistoric _research geeks looking up the lore – who knew?" Dean snarked at Sam.

Joe carried on blithely, " - even if sometimes it's just a hunter too stove up to be active anymore deciding to write his 'memoirs'. Quite a few claim that the Neanderthal extinction was indirectly manoeuvred by the Faerie 'because the heavy brow-ridged brigade rocked too much in the kicking evil ass department; apparently they were wicked telepaths and had super-duper psychic whammy that made Nostradamus look lame –"

"And people say _I'm _the throwback to a _caveman_?" Dean muttered deliberately not quite _sotto voce _enough with a smirk at his younger 'super-duper psychic whammy' possessing brother.

" – but us softie Cro-Maggies were much easier to deal with," Joe finished, again pretending not to hear the comment.

Dean couldn't help but flick a querying glance towards the two angels, neither of whom moved, but Castiel did sort of infinitesimally nod his head as if supporting the veracity of what Joe was saying.

"So how many of these Faerie did it take to do this?" Sam indicated the hotel.

"Strange as it sounds but probably only one." Joe conceded, "Like I said, the Faerie tend to be sociopathic particularly towards each other. Sharing their twisted sense of fun with each other is _not_ how the Faerie operate."

"But the level of power…" pointed out Dean.

"If the ritual was done so that all available power was focussed and directed like…I dunno, a laser beam," Joe suggested, "instead of the power being spread more widely, like buckshot from a 12-gauge, it would probably have been about enough to work within a certain limited range."

"So, we're looking for a _Faerie…_in a building crammed _full_ of people who've been transformed into _fairytale monsters_," Dean summarised dryly. "News from the file marked 'duh'."

"Uh-uh," Joe contradicted, "the Faerie was pulling the strings, sure, but the idiot who did this was as human as I am."

"Seriously?" Dean and Sam exchanged sceptical glances. "What about Faeries being power-mad sociopaths who don't share?"

Joe grinned, "True, but unfortunately for them, it's that or nothing. Allegedly the Faerie fight against the Neanderthals was won at the cost of some heavy hits, and one of those hits was that they could no longer do stuff like this themselves. They had to get some idiot to do it for them. The Faerie are just like demons –"

"The demon can't do it to you, it has to get you to do it to _yourself_." Sam finished, his face tight and grim.

Tactfully Joe ignored the brief but significant pause Sam's bitter words engendered, and went on, "Basically yes. Again, like certain black-eyed boys from the hot place, the Faerie find it most fun to give the sucker exactly what they've asked for, but in a completely twisted way. F'instance, a few years back, one particular guy who redefined the dictionary definition of 'sexist jerk' made a deal with a Faerie because he wanted to be hung like a bull and have constant sex."

"I'm going to like this, aren't I?" Dean grinned in anticipation.

Joe also flashed a surprisingly white-toothed grin. "I think so. The Faerie transformed him into a prize Texas Longhorn breeding bull – in a cloning research lab in Tucson. Unable to move, in a cage all day, kept artificially 'stimulated' and with a giant industrial suction cup attached to his particulars having all his joy juice milked into containers for researchers to splice and dice and experiment on."

Dean laughed, Sam sniggered, Castiel's shoulders trembled suspiciously, and even Uriel's lips curved upwards.

"Basically you're looking for someone holding a massive grudge but with almost no sense of perspective about whatever's sent their blood pressure into orbit," Joe summed up.

Sam and Dean didn't even need to look at each other as they said in unison: "Teenage boy."

"I'd say so," agreed Joe. "The average adolescent male is all too often too young, too egocentric and too stupid to realise that anyone offering them a 'do this and I'll give you power, wealth and all the nubile teenage temptresses you can want' deal is never going to be on the up and up."

"But how're we going to flush him out if everyone in there is…not themselves?" Sam asked helplessly.

Joe pursed his lips, "You got any galangal?"

"One pouch of dried flakes, yeah." Dean admitted.

"According to the lore, if you pour the flakes of galangal into your palm, they will lead you like a will o' the wisp straight to the Faerie. Theoretically since the Faerie's patsy is acting as its agent, the stuff should lead you straight to him."

"I'll go in and flush him out to you and Dean," offered Sam, striding straight to the Impala's trunk, past the two angels – as if they weren't even there.

Dean winced mentally as Uriel's never happy face glowered even more; so it was back to Sam-in-a-Snit mode.

"Dean, shotguns," Sam tossed one to Dean, who caught it reflexively, taking the other for himself, and shoving their sole – and very small – pouch of dried galangal flakes into his jacket pocket – before simply letting go of the Impala's trunk lid so it dropped back down hard.

Somehow Dean managed to hold his tongue whilst Joe walked away to the edge of the car park whilst he and Sam headed to the main entrance – and carried on past as they saw oddly shaped silhouettes in the white-frosted panes; the last thing they needed to do was show anyone the way _out_ of the building, but around the corner was the side door into the hotel kitchen.

As soon as they had turned the corner and were out of sight, though not necessarily earshot, Dean snapped, "Hey, you take your crappy attitude out on my baby again and I'll kick your sorry ass into next week."

"You were the one who got us lumbered with Uriel! You _knew _calling to Castiel would probably bring him along as well!" Sam accused in a hissed whisper.

"I'm-so-sohree, but I was _hampered_ by, oh yeah…my total inability to _care_," Dean shot back. "And, yes, I am more prepared to trust grim and grimmer over your _demon lover_, Samuel."*

"Trust? The biggest pair of hypocrites currently standing on the planet? Oh, that's sensible! At least Ruby is _honest _about what she is!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I _mean_ your new best friend in the cheap suit and Columbo trench-coat. What's his name, Dean?"

"Kass-_tea_-ell."

"No, Dean. Not Mr Wings, the sucker who got body-jacked. Did it ever occur to you to ask the name of the _man_ Castiel has got squatting inside his own head?"

Dean flushed, suddenly aware that he had no knowledge of the human host. "Castiel said he was a devout guy who prayed for this –"

"Did you insist _he prove it_ by letting the host tell you that nice little explanation _himself?_" Sam pounced instantly. "And what about _Uriel_ – what did _his_ current landlord do to deserve _that _heaven-sent tenant from hell? What about those 'six brothers' Castiel told you were killed when the witnesses broke the seal – did their hosts die too? Did any of those angels tell their hosts, or their hosts' families that there was a strong probability they would end up very gruesomely dead? Tell me, Dean, does Castiel's host have a wife? Children? Did _they_ pray for this to happen? Does he have parents or a best friend wondering what happened to him, or siblings? Somewhere out there is there a guy desperately searching for _his _mysteriously vanished brother like you searched for me when Azazel's daughter possessed me, or like Deputy Sheriff Haduk searched for _her _brother?"

The questions stung Dean tat-tat-tat, like being tormented by a kid with a pea-shooter. "What's your point, Sam?"

"My point is you've got this massive downer on _Ruby_, but at least _she_ made sure she wasn't _trapping _some innocent host inside their own body this time around. Are you seriously telling me it is _beyond_ the wit and ability of an _angel _to also go to a hospital and pick a vacant 'house'?"

"They need permission."

"What?" finally Sam's flow was stemmed.

"Unlike a demon who can hijack any poor sucker not protected, an angel needs to have the host's permission to 'move in'." Dean told him flatly, "So, no, Sam, they can't _do_ any almost-grave-robbing, unlike Ruby, who _I_ still can't believe that _you _are stupid enough to be still _doing_."

It was Sam's turn to flinch slightly at the snarled insult, but he retorted hotly, "You want to _know_ why? It's because _Ruby_ doesn't make any _secret_ of what she is. With Ruby I don't have to do the usual imitation of a trained poodle jumping through hoops that women usually insist on before I can get laid. I know her reaction to me is honest."

"And you call me on taking 'stupid and crazy pills'?!" choked Dean. "Don't you think she knows how to _fake_ it after who-knows-how-many centuries of round-heeled action?"

"I know that, what I'm saying is that I know she's not doing that with _me_."

Dean shook his head. "I don't believe I'm hearing this – and you think _I'm_ gullible for taking Castiel on _faith_?"

"I know it _because_ Ruby _is_ a demon – yes, demons lie, but Evil is also lazy. Evil doesn't exert itself unless it gains an advantage that makes the outlay of time and effort worthwhile – and Ruby? Complete slob – she makes _you _look like an anal-retentive neat freak."

"So?"

"So, there's no advantage to Ruby letting me have her in terms of the Big Picture. Stroking my ego – and other parts – doesn't give Ruby any strategic advantage or really matter that much in the grand scheme of our Apocalypse Nowish. So there's no reason for her to 'fake it' or even have sex with me at all if she chooses not to."

"And you don't think she hasn't road-tested her hosts before?" Dean snapped.

"I don't care about before. Right now, she's with _me_. Let me ask you something, Dean, did it ever occur to you to wonder _why_ I never tried to get it on with Ruby when she was a perky blonde?"

"Gee, I don't know, Sam – _sanity_ maybe?"

"It was because I've been there, Dean. I've been the Voice Within, the prisoner trapped inside my own body as something used me to do things I didn't want to do. You're not stupid, you must have guessed that Azazel's hell spawn did more than make me chug hard liquor, smoke pansy cigarettes and cut Steve Wandell's throat when she was riding me."

"I…knew you wouldn't want to talk about it," Dean acknowledged, remembering only too well his panic when Sam disappeared and the nausea when he'd realised that Sam had to be possessed – and how-in-hell was he going to get the thing out of Sam without injuring or killing his brother?

"Damn skippy," Sam snapped. "I never moved on blonde Ruby because I couldn't guarantee that I wasn't violating – that I wasn't _raping _– some poor woman who wasn't actually attracted to me, or who might even have been sarcastically critiquing my performance inside her head…"

For an instant Dean had an image of a naked Sam in bed, intertwined with a naked old-blonde-Ruby, with a thought-bubble above them of now-brunette-Ruby making pithy aphorisms about his style, stamina and technique.

"…I'm getting nothing but Ruby – no artificial colours or preservatives." Sam finished his tirade, unaware of Dean's momentary mental vignette.

"And you think banging an _undiluted _hell fiend is a _plus_?!" Dean demanded incredulously.

"Sanctimony? From the guy who had his tongue massaging the tonsils of Lust itself?"

"That was different! It was trying to _kill _me!"

"And _that's _a _healthy_ reaction? You know what? Bottom-line…I _like _sex with Ruby. It's honest, and straightforward and uncomplicated by the emotional crap and complicated relationship games and psychological sophistries that just smother anything remotely _real_ these days…and I like that. I like that I know just how to make Ruby moan, and how to make her gasp, and how to make her take everything I'm giving her. I like having her naked and spread for me, and I like that little mew she makes just before she comes, and I like the way I make her scream my name when I ride her hard…" Sam finally sucked in replenishing air. "Now we've cleared _that_ up, I'll go in an flush our bird, you set up out here with Joe."

_Continued in Chapter 21…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

* In the DVD gag-reel for Season 2, in one scene Jensen has to sit on a bed and say his lines whilst simultaneously ratcheting the Colt without looking at it but looking at Jared who sits down in a chair and opens a bottle of beer. Jensen keeps messing up the ratchet because he can't look down at what he's doing and when Jared complains that his legs are tired because he has to keep standing up and sitting down to do the retake, Jensen sarcastically says 'I'm _so_ sorry' two or three times (before offering to swap and let Jared do the sitting/exposition/gun handling bit and him sit in the chair and open a beer).


	21. Chapter 21

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 21**

For a moment Dean remained standing in place as Sam yanked open the metal side door and slipped into the thankfully deserted kitchen.

Surprisingly, Dean wasn't bothered by the occasional head-stabbing image of Sam with Ruby – in the carnal sense. He didn't like Ruby, he certainly didn't trust her, and, if it _did_ become necessary, he _would _kill her.

What did bother him was the underlying aggression in Sam.

Not even Alistair's torture would have wrung the admittance from his lips, but the truth was that Sam was larger and stronger than Dean on his own account, without even factoring in any mental mojo. But any guy blessed with a big package also had a responsibility to his lady to make sure what he did increased her _pleasure _not caused her _pain_. If Sam was thoughtless or too rough, he could really hurt Ruby.

Brother or not, if Sam crossed a line, Dean would kick his ass. No Winchester was one of those sick scumbags who got off on hurting a woman…_and like there's the slightest chance that Ruby would ever let __**me **__know about any domestic violence problem…_Sam and Ruby already had Olympic Gold for the world's most dysfunctional relationship…_for all I know, to a demon, domestic violence is foreplay_.

No, his biggest problem with the whole Sam-Ruby dynamic was that, like 'Truth surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies', there was just enough logic and sufficiently unarguable points in Sam's contentions that he was unable to entirely dismiss Sam's viewpoint, and Ruby herself was like that British war leader, Churchill had said, 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'.

She was the biggest unknown they had – even Castiel had admitted to Dean that he had no knowledge or understanding of her motivations or true intentions, other than to admit what was blindingly obvious to a toddler, namely that her hatred of Lillith was pathological, homicidal and 100 percent genuine. Dean could relate – Alistair ranked No.1 on _his_ hit parade too.

But the undeniable fact was that Ruby had repeatedly come through for them, right from her _way _out of left field intervention back when she was a Blonde Bombshell to save them both from the Seven Deadly Sins. And in the end, she had simply _given_ that spiffy old dagger to Sam. She'd saved them from the witches, and Dean had sensed that her offer to save them and Viktor Henrickson from Lillith, at the cost of her own life, had been genuine – though he suspected her hatred of Lillith, rather than any regard for _them_ had been the motivating force behind her 'it's worth it' attitude.

_And_ she had taken the biggest risk of them all in luring Alistair to that little 'Godzilla versus Mothra' confrontation they'd staged in order to save Anna. Dean had been confident that Uriel would try to out-psych him, but wouldn't risk actually hurting – too much – the guy Castiel had worked so hard to yank out of the pit. Ruby had had no such comfort – he'd seen it in her eyes, they all had; Anna had even suggested that Dean alone let Uriel do his thing and 'hope' that the demons turned up in time to stop Castiel and Uriel killing Anna.

Ruby had told them all to 'cut the emo' and left. But when Alistair's stooges came in holding her, with all that blood where Alistair had tortured her, slicing into her with that knife…because when it came down to it, Ruby didn't expect to be alive, or consciously exist or whatever at the end of this saga.

Every time they met one of Lillith's foot-soldiers, it usually started the Evil Genius soliloquy about the unspeakable tortures that would be inflicted on Ruby when they dragged her back down to the pit. Her habitual response was to roll her eyes and fire off a sarcastic retort, but sometimes when she didn't realise anyone was looking, her face would briefly flicker into a repose of weary resignation, a dulling of that bitter sardonic fire in her eyes; he could see in her face a tired 'acceptance' of her belief that whether they won or lost, she wouldn't live to experience the rewards or consequences of _either_ outcome.

And for all his mistrust of Ruby that _also_ bothered Dean, because the plain though unpalatable truth was that there was one way in which he simply could not compete against Ruby in rivalry. Ruby had done what no _person _could have – she had saved Sam.

Ruby had done exactly what Dean would have done – she had saved Sam no matter the cost, even though she'd had to effectively prostitute herself to hammer through that thick oversized skull. Sam had been so despairing and lost that if Ruby had _really_ been working for Lillith when she captured him in that crappy apartment, he'd have stood there and let her gut him like a mackerel. And the second of her two primary demands before she helped Sam – sobriety – showed her grasp of how utterly hopeless and helpless Sam had been. Forget supernatural horrors, the amount of liquor that Sam had been knocking back just by lunch every day would have seen him fatally wrap the Impala around a telegraph pole before much longer without Lillith having to do diddly squat.

Ruby had stuck with Sam no matter how often she had doubtless wanted to shove his head in a bucket of ice water and keep it down. Dean had the same urge on an almost daily basis. Sam had always tended to be obstinate and even enjoy the self-righteousness trip. Ironic, given their constant loggerheads in life, Sam had turned more into Dad than Dad had been; he'd amped up that whole 17th Century puritanical New England Calvinism to a level even Dad never had.

And okay, Sam did have a point there, one that Dean would once have laughed at – until Lisa Braidan had looked into his eyes and lied that he had no son. Even in the hopelessly unlikely scenario that he lived through this, how could he go back to her and admit that if a woman was between legal and menopausal odds were that he 'knew' her – but only Biblically. Why would Lisa want such a man-ho' when she could have a sleek, shiny modern Mercedes Man not an old Impala that was the original good time had by all?

And that was ignoring all the rest of it as well. Like he'd told Sam, hunters died bloody or sad, because hunting was a young man's game. For every hunter like Bobby Singer, who'd managed to stay fairly whole and a had a legitimate business as an auto junkyard to keep a roof over his head and food on his table, and Joe Briddon, who clearly had some similar gig going, possibly with his 'lady friend', there were a dozen or more who'd ended up just like Sam and Dean – the first time around – dead or crippled before the age of thirty.

Castiel had polished him up nice, but he'd had two arthritic fingers by the age of 25, backache from a lifetime of crappy beds that just wouldn't quit, and eyes that needed spectacles he couldn't have afforded to buy for years. He _still _did need specs, which showed that the divine largesse only went so far. Maybe in the future there would be some way for hunters to do what they did – save people – and still be able to lead full lives with families and a likelihood of dying at 95 surrounded by fat grandchildren, but here and now hunters were mostly battered, poverty-stricken and short-lived.

In a way, though, he had to appreciate the undoubted 'cosmic irony' that had to be lurking somewhere. An angel had saved him from Hell, and he had been bedded by an angel – and it was definitely _been _– for all his tomcatting around there had been no way he was in charge or control of anything that Anna had decided to do that night; he had been the seduced, not the seducer. A demon had saved _Sam _from putting himself in Hell with Dean, and _he'd_ been bedded by a demon, and Dean wondered whether Sam had already realised there was no way Sam had been in charge or control anything that Ruby had decided to do _that _night.

Either some very disturbing synchronicity was at work, or else it was the biggest coincidence in the history of the cosmos. And the Winchester position on the theory of coincidences was well known.

_Continued in Chapter 22…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

Author's Note – this story takes place after Sex and Violence, and before Death Takes a Holiday.


	22. Chapter 22

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 22**

Sam stalked through the kitchen into the short corridor to the lobby, so angry he was literally shaking.

_He_ was getting _lectures _in appropriate sexual behaviour from the original 'Wham Bam What's Your Name Again, Honey?'

Maybe he should _enlighten _Mr Morality about that time he'd had Ruby flat on her back on the rear seat of Dean's beloved Impala and given the suspension the workout of its mechanical life long before Anna came up with the same plan. At least _he _could name every woman on his short list of partners, unlike his man-slut brother who would need appendices, indices, cross-references and footnotes.

And just where did Dean get off with his implications? He wasn't one of those scuzzy lowlifes that got their rocks off – and needed 'em chopping off – on hurting a woman. Hadn't he _said _that he'd not made a move on blonde Ruby because of the host…?

Anyway, Santa Fe* didn't count…two people with super-duper powers both drawn from the Dark Side having a furious screaming argument – wackiness was bound to ensue. Besides, if they _hadn't_ fought…if he hadn't been livid and lustful, he would never have had that breakthrough, and even so, he still didn't know if it made him a match for Lillith and Alistair, given his refusal to continue for a while – which seemed so foolish in retrospect - had led to him being trussed like a chicken by that pathetic magician Charlie and Dean nearly strangled into the bargain.

Okay, so may it was….icky…but…He, Sam Winchester had fainted. Not blacked out, not passed out, or any of those macho phrases, but _fainted_. Pure instinct had made him bend forward to flick his tongue over that tiny bead of blood on her lip where _one _of them had bitten down, and it had detonated on his tongue like a grenade, exploding and fizzing and popping through his bloodstream in a battering, thunderous rush of stupendous ecstasy that had nearly blown the top of his head off. Ruby had thought he'd had some sort of seizure for several seconds -

And he always made sure it was good for Ruby, too. Knowing what to expect when he fed on her blood the next time had enabled him to channel the energy for his satisfaction and hers. He could hold a few seconds' orgasm twice as long, and better, hold Ruby at the peak of her pleasure while he sent waves of energy through her body…

The sudden tic-tac of claws on tile was his only warning and he jumped aside barely in time as the werewolf suffering a snack-attack clumsily leapt at him; it hit the side of the lobby front-desk with a pained yelp.

_Stop thinking with your dick, Sam, and get your ass in gear!_ Even as he scolded himself he suited action to inner reprimand and brought the butt of the shotgun down as hard as he dared on the furry skull, hoping the thick hair would protect it from fracture. Fortunately the wolf slumped down into unconsciousness without too much apparent damage.

But the Winchester luck being what it was, Sam doubted it would last long. Other than him and the unconscious giant fur ball, the lobby was empty; making a decision, Sam moved and unlocked the main doors of the hotel, briefly sticking his head out so the others could see him, giving and receiving a nod to where Joe and Dean had taken up positions at different angles outside, leaving the two angels guarding the artificial child version in the Impala.

Carefully he shut the doors properly again but so he only had to push down on the handle to go outside. If he had to exit the hotel fast once he'd grabbed the Faerie's idiot enabler, particularly if he had to drag the guy from the building, the last thing he wanted to have to do was have the twit going through a kitchen full of sharp weaponry. If kid X pulled a steak knife on him, Sam doubted he would be able to restrain his deep need to put both hands round the moron's throat and throttle the bastard.

Quickly he poured the galangal flakes into his palm; for a moment nothing happened then they rose into the air and began to wind their way through the air like a wisp of smoke curling from some invisible cigar - straight towards the ballroom, natch.

Even as he followed the floating trail, his mind went back to Dean's sucky attitude to Ruby – who had willingly risked her life and saved precious Anna's cute heavenly self in time for Dean – and why was he not surprised – to get between her thighs on the Impala's back seat as Sam had done with Ruby. Although, contrary to the opinion of his brother - and certain winged menaces who'd _last _been on the social scene when hauling a woman _awake_ into the cave by her hair, rather than clubbing her unconscious first, had been considered a controversially radical feminist approach – he wasn't _stupid_ enough to think he had Ruby's measure in any way.

Oh sure, she'd accepted his apology in Santa Fe and was positively blasé – as long as it helped boost his powers to squash-Lillith-like-a-bug levels she was happy for him to do the drinking her blood thing as well as simply doing her. But she hadn't quite been able to hide her shock at how powerful he had been in Santa Fe – though he had been fuelled by rage and lust and indignation – and the fact that he had been able to overpower _her _power, even though only temporarily and only because he was absolutely furious, had clearly startled and shaken her.

When it came right down to it, Ruby was working to her own agenda, though her desire to annihilate Lillith was genuine enough – she seemed almost completely _uninterested_ in the Seals and Lucifer breaking out of his cage, except when these pertained to her permanently looped hymn of 'kill Lillith'.

Was she really – no pun intended – on the side of the angels, or was she just sticking around because right know her agenda and the Winchesters' happened to dovetail?

Though, these days…he was wondering more and more – did it _matter_?

The fact remained that he _had _been able to overpower Ruby's whammy with his own, albeit only temporarily and he hadn't tried to since…

_But…_what _if_ Lillith or Alistair or some other player _did_ manage to capture Ruby or send her back to the basement again? What would that _matter_, if Sam could force her to stay with him - or return to wherever he was - regardless of what she or anyone else tried to do to the contrary? And Lillith could swivel on a stick before she got her claws back into Ruby again, because right now, Ruby was his, and he would never let her go.

_Continued in Chapter 23…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

* Because of the length of this story, I wrote about the Sam & Ruby fight in a Sam/Ruby one-shot called Give & Take; unfortunately this was wiped by my hard drive corruption, so I am having to retype that as well. I'll post it as soon as it is ready.

NB – in British English, _dis_interested = _dis_passionate, impartial, unbiased and _un_interested = _un_caring, indifferent, callous.


	23. Chapter 23

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 23**

Sam tensed as he slipped inside the ballroom; it was thronged with all manner of bizarre beings, but to Sam's relief a sort of dull calm seemed to permeate the room, with people huddled in small groups or pairs that ignored each other and him. It almost seemed as if the transformation process had a side effect of lowering the IQ and dulling the intellect, which made sense. If _he_ had been an evil Faerie -

Okay, that came out _so_ wrong, even inside his own head, but the Big Bad generally wanted biddable stooges – underlings that were plenty powerful, but not that bright, or not that curious; Azazel had targeted children, for instance, because of their being so easy to manipulate. It was like in those gangster _chic _and Bond type movies where the villain's henchmen blasted away at the hero to give Dr Evil time to reach the secret escape pod or the Columbian drug lord time to escape in his private jet. Of course, in real life, each henchman was perfectly well aware his 'boss' valued him slightly less than his dirty socks and in any firefight was thus more concerned about saving his own ass and making his escape than covering the Head Honcho's cowardly butt.

Logically, the Faerie must be aware of that real life difference and understandably didn't want a large number of enraged, mentally alert victims trying to escape its clutches, or get hold of it in _their_ clutches. Actually, Sam was grateful for this apparent component of the enchantment as he willed the galangal to hurry up – the longer he was in here, the more likely it was he would have to seriously injure or kill one of these people in self-defence, and he didn't want to do that.

The thing was – whilst Ruby didn't _take_ any crap, neither did she dish it _out_ – Dean would be outraged at the comparison, but Ruby's ruthless self-awareness and brutal self-honesty in any given situation was yet another way in which Ruby was more like Dean than Dean was.

Yes, he had been furious when she'd called him fat and flabby, when she'd told him his real problem was his refusal to admit he _liked _the taste, _liked_ the way it made him feel. But she'd had a valid point, just like she had when she'd pointed out that when faced with Mothra and Godzilla, it was like dealing with a curse – you didn't fight back, you just got the hell out of the way as fast as you could.

Dean had seen the truth – even before that whole mess with the magicians had blown up in their faces, Dean had told him bluntly that hunters 'died bloody or sad' – and unlike Sam, Dean had a son and a potential wife he could go and make a family out of in the ludicrously unlikely scenario Dean didn't die – again.

And that wasn't some fantasy, either. Dean was his brother, of course he loved the guy, and Dean was a _bona fide _hero, but he was also a stone killer, and even when working for the good, Dean had a ruthless streak, a willingness to do whatever was necessary for the greater good – or what he wanted. If Dean decided he really wanted Lisa Braidan, he would have her, and woe betide what stood in his way.

But even then Dean's attitude was tinged with hypocrisy – because quite frankly, if it weren't for those super powers Dean was so down on, they would _both_ be dead several times over.

He _needed _to be strong; he _needed _to exercise his powers. If Castiel was being upfront about Dean being 'the only one' who could avert the apocalypse – and Sam wasn't so sure about that – then the Columbo-dressed angel needed to up his game several levels because so far, following his initial snazzy 'dragging Dean out of Hell' touchdown, Castiel's record in saving Dean was pretty crappy. If Sam hadn't done his thing with Samhain, as just one example, Dean would be dead and Sam along with him.

And that whole thing with the magicians had just proved Ruby's point. It was _because_ of Dean and Castiel's disapproval that he'd stopped – not the sex, because he enjoyed Ruby too much – but he'd refused to take her blood. And where had it gotten him? Fat and flabby like Ruby said. Immortality spell or no immortality spell, when Charlie had wrapped that noose round Dean's throat and tried to lock him onto that table and shish-kebab him with ten spikes, he _should_ have been able to rip the noose and himself free in an instant with the power of his mind and then bounce Charlie the douche bag around that theatre like an oversize _piñata_. Instead of which he'd struggled futilely and frantically like a beetle scrabbling in a jar watching Dean have the life choked out of him. Where had Castiel been _then_? If _Jay_ had been like Vernon, willing to sacrifice innocent lives to stay forever young, and _he _hadn't done the right thing – exit both Winchesters.

_Wait…_Sam braced as the galangal seemed to twist towards an actually rather young Count Dracula, but the guy was ogling the rack not the neck of a distinctly nubile Aztec princess co-ed, clearly hormonal rather than mystical. The galangal twisted away again and he snarled so savagely that a nearby Viking and a Klingon drew back from his path. He was not in the mood for this take all night.

And he had understood exactly Jay's bitterness. Doing the right thing had lost the man his two best friends – one to death and one to hate, and he'd been left old, sick and alone. Doing the right thing had already got _him _dead from a knife in the back, Jake Tulley cranking open the Devil's Gate for a whole battalion of unspeakable evil, and Dean selling his soul to bring him back!

_That _was why he'd pumped round after round savagely into Jake Tulley…because of what the guy had forced Dean to do, and in truth, he'd known from the instant he saw that scar in the mirror; even though he'd desperately clung to believing Dean's explanation, the look of shock on Bobby's face as he'd opened the door, and the horrified glance the older man's had thrown Dean had subconsciously confirmed it before they reached Wyoming and Jake Tulley's undisguised shock and resolute certainty that he had killed Sam let the cat out of the bag.

Trying to do the right thing had nearly allowed Charlie to kill both of them, and no matter whether they stopped the apocalypse or not, Sam wasn't going to end up like – well, not Bobby because even at sixty, Bobby was cool and together – but like Travis, or worse, Gordon Walker. Ellen had had the Roadhouse, Pastor Jim had been a salary-drawing clergyman, Caleb had got by with his tourist dude-ranch business and Bobby had the auto shop, but he and Dean had nothing like that to get by on, and why should they? He wasn't going to still be doing this when he was sixty-four, even if he was still not dead.

So how _dare_ Dean and Castiel try to make out he was _bad_ because he'd taken the lesson Charlie and Jay had inadvertently imparted on the chin? His stomach had been alive with butterflies when he'd left Dean in the bar, knowing Ruby would be around if he looked. Ruby had accepted his answer that he didn't want to be hunting as a geriatric, because it was honest and true as far as it went, and anyway she was more interested in getting him back into psychic shape than psychoanalysing his hang-ups.

Though, they'd certainly achieved _that_ goal. He'd surprised her by asking where she stole the car from, and when she admitted it was some yuppie executive type currently on a European vacation, he'd asked her to take them back to the dude's house, where breaking in had been a cinch. The kitchen had been all stainless steel and packed with enough gadgetry to feed the 101st Airborne _haute cuisine_, and they'd actually grinned at each other like school-kids as they made bets on how little of it the guy actually knew how to use – or even what it was. The master bedroom had been just as bad – a _huge _square bed had sat like a lump in the middle of the room, as opposed to having a bed-head against a wall, with black silk sheets and the whole thing was done in black-and-silver. If it had been toned down a little it would have worked, but like Auntie Eliza's overblown honeymoon suite, it had merely looked ridiculously pretentious and despite her attempts to retain a stern 'you-asked-to-have-a-psychic-workout-buster' Ruby had had a fit a of the giggles, which had set _him _off.

He'd soon _stopped_ laughing when his attempts to undress Ruby mentally had done nothing but make the zipper on her waist-length leather jacket quiver. Ruby, not bothering to hide the 'I told you so' smirk, had simply shrugged it off and then pulled her T-shirt over her head and slipped off her strapless bra so she was naked to the waist. Telling him to lie back on the bed she'd shucked her jeans and panties as he simply opened his jeans and freed his prodigious erection; she'd straddled him, impaling herself on him, slowly slicing carefully into that vein in her forearm – and then holding it so he had to sit up and brace himself on his hands to lick her life's force in all its copper-tang tart deliciousness, instead of lowering her arm to his mouth so he could use his hands to fondle her bare breasts like she usually did.

_Then _she'd pulled her arm back even further from his needy mouth and told him bluntly that she had given him the choice of whether to accept her offer of help to kill Lillith, and if he was going to dick about vacillating and going all 'emo' about it every five minutes then she would be 'gone in Sixty Seconds' because he was in no way hotter than the eternal hunk Nic Cage and '_like I said in Santa Fe – better things to do with my time than baby-sit you through your premature male menopausal crisis_'.

He'd accepted the punishment because she was right, he had been moping like a…not a girl, because every female he'd ever met turned out tougher than titanium…but definitely like some lovesick Labrador puppy, when he needed to be one of Bobby's full-grown Rottweillers with all the big fangs and bad attitude.

He'd wanted to stay with Ruby, especially after he'd flipped them over so he was on top and vigorously shown her how quickly he got over fat and flabby, but she'd driven him back to his motel at 3am without demur; when he'd gone into their room Dean was asleep, or at least pretended to be. Given that they'd spent the vast majority of their lives barely six feet apart day in and day out, he'd been fairly sure that Dean had been awake, and able to smell the musk of sex on him, but thankfully Dean hadn't called him on it…

…Because, if he _had_, Sam might have doled out a few hard home truths to his big brother…The fact was that Dean hadn't been 'right' since Castiel had rescued him, it was like the angel had lavished a fortune on restoring the Impala and then forgotten to fill the gas tank –

"Oh terrific…"

Of _course_ the Winchester luck – all bad – was in top form tonight, as the galangal flakes wafted out through one the opened pair of terrace French windows into the walled garden. Of _course_ the kid Sam was after couldn't have stayed in the _well-lit _ballroom, _noooo_ of _course _he'd gone outside into a large exuberantly foliaged garden that was _dark _because it was the _middle of the friggin' night _and every looming shrub or hulking tree could now conceal a Frankenstein's monster or an abominable snowman or a vampire and of _course_ the galangal flakes were tiny and dark brown coloured and therefore impossible to see against the _blackness of night _and gradually losing cohesion the longer they danced about in the air!

He moved fast across the terrace, trying to keep the faint cigar-smoke like wisp visible and tensed for anything to lurch at him, although, most things here didn't seem to be much of a threat. He felt his chest tighten as he nearly fell over a 'Hammer House of Horror' type mummy huddled in a ball under a tree, rocking back and forth slightly, its mouldy bandages almost in danger of unravelling. But what could he say? He couldn't help in anyway, even if the mummy was capable of understanding him, which he doubted. Once again the anger rose, hot and yet simultaneously also cold – oh what he'd like to do to the dumbass responsible for causing this – and forcing him to spend the night in close quarters to Castiel and _Uriel_ for pity's sake.

He turned away more sharply than he intended and for a moment nearly lost sight of the galangal before he spotted it again, because the mummy – so helpless despite supposedly being a terrifying creature – was too much like Dean was right now. Dean was…weak.

_Even in my head I whisper the word like a frightened four year old…_

But there was no other way to adequately put it. And yes, a _huge _part of him was angry, and frightened and desperately wanted the _real _Dean, or at least the _old _Dean back. Why wouldn't he? All his life, Dean had taken care of him, Dean had protected him, no matter what price he himself had had to pay.

And Dean had paid a heavy price – long before he'd sold his soul for Sam, long before he'd given up the chance to make Lisa his wife and Ben his son in reality as well as name; he'd been the lion that stood between Sam and the rest of the world since before Sam could remember it, and until Castiel had yanked Dean from the pit he'd had the scars to prove it, and they weren't all literal.

He doubted Dean even remembered why Sam hadn't drooled over the gal in leather who'd come as Xena to this party. He'd only been ten, and Dean about fourteen or fifteen, when he'd sneaked off football practice back to their home-of-the-week and seen Dean handcuffed to his own bed with this crazy grown up lady in leather making him yelp in pain. He'd rushed to help his brother and ended up with the crazy lady laughing at him. Of course, years later he'd realised that she could only have been about 22 or 23 at the time herself. But he hadn't really grasped Dean's attempted explanation, except for the fact that Dean claimed to _like _the pain. Since he adored his big brother at ten, he'd taken that titbit to heart.

Had it been two weeks or three weeks later, they'd been in another crappy apartment by then that Dad had paid one month's rent for, and if they were lucky would be able to last for three in before they skipped out? Whatever, Dad had been heating some pasta while he and Dean were watching something on TV and Sam, apropos of nothing, had suddenly turned round and punched Dean in the face with all his strength, throwing his brother off the couch to land in a sprawled heap on the floor, clutching his jaw in wide-eyed shock as Sam burst into tears from the pain in his little hand.

Dad had been stunned and outraged – even before a bewildered and frightened Sam had explained that Dean liked being 'hurted' and Sam loved his brother. Dad had always been more scary when he was quiet-mad than when he was yelling-mad, and he'd been quiet-mad when he'd sent Sam to bed as he pulled his belt out of his waistband loops and stated that in that case, he was going to show how much he 'loved' Dean.

How long had it been before Dean walked stiffly into their tiny, damp bedroom, and found him scrunched up in bed, rocking back and forth, wracked with sobbing, with his hands pressed tightly over his ears trying to shut out the sound of the belt he knew was striking Dean's butt and back – and it was all his fault? Without hesitation, Dean had sat on Sam's bed, despite the pain it must have caused him, and simply scooped him into his lap and told him it was ok; he'd forgiven Sam, because he always forgave Sam.

And Sam had quickly been distracted as Dean explained again – much more slowly and with much smaller words, about 'dominatrixes' and certain kinds of special games grown ups liked to play.

But Dean _hadn't_ been a grown-up at that time, even though psychologically he'd had to grow up at the age of four.

Sam hadn't had that epiphany until he'd run out of his scholarship allowance at Stanford barely halfway through the first semester and had to take a busboy job to keep himself in food and rent money. After the first day of throbbing feet, rude customers and stinking of grease, old coffee and burgers in that diner he'd sat down and fought off the exhaustion and worked out how much he was going to have to economise _and _get some sort of part-time job to make ends meet.

Halfway down his calculation sheet, he'd remembered how Dad had sporadically brought in money – change after he'd gassed the Impala and restocked the rock salt and silver, etc, - because Dean always took care of the 'housekeeping' stuff like buying them clothes, food, toiletries, etc, (in the face of Dad's ineptitude in that toothpaste tubes did not magically last forever). It had suddenly dawned on him that either Dad had magically been able to make a pint pot of money consistently stretch to fill a quarter-gallon's worth of expenses, or that Dean had to have been discreetly supplementing the kitty on his own account for years, safe in the knowledge that Dad had only the vaguest notion of grocery shopping and no concept of how fast a kid like Sam grew out of clothes. It had hardly been a quantum leap at 18 think back and realise that the 'crazy leather chick' had probably been _paying _Dean for the privilege of getting her sick sado-paedo-tendency kicks.

Skirting the fountain cautiously as he found – whoa - a _mermaid _disconsolately crying and wafting her tail in the water, Sam acknowledged he would never know when – or how _young _– Dean had been when he lost his virginity, but he knew _why_ he always got so uncomfortable about Dean's 'sexcapades', because he wasn't entirely sure Dean had had his cherry popped _voluntarily – _or done it for cash to keep himself, Sam and Dad in food and fuel for a week.

For all his animosity to Ruby, the one thing Dean had _never _done was hurl _sexual_ insults at her – unlike so-called angel Uriel, he'd never called her whore, hooker, slut, ho', prossie, slag, or any of the other vicious names that usually _men_ heaped on the women _they_ pursued purely for their _own_ debased sexual gratification. And Sam was certain that was because Dean _knew_ what it was like to prostitute his body…hustling pool and card games could only do so much, and if Dean could earn $200 in an hour of servicing some cougar or hen night harlotry gig instead of getting $50 in three hours of playing pool with the suckers, Dean would blow it off as 'fun and easy' - except when it came to your self-respect.

Oh yeah, he knew what it had cost Dean to look after him, which was why there was another, _equally_ huge part of him that was _more_ than _okay _with Dean being…weak. Yes, a big part of him liked that feeling, of being the one that _Dean needed _for a change, rather than needing Dean.

For the first time _he_ could be the protector; _he_ could take care of Dean, _he_ look after him, be there for Dean just like Dean had always, always, been there for him. On that morning of his 18th birthday, when he'd called the cab, picked up his backpack and gone downstairs in that rented house and straightforwardly told Dad he'd got a full ride to Stanford and he was taking it…their fight had been only verbal, but no less vicious. And Dean had stood next to Dad in the kitchen, torment in his eyes, and watched him walk away. And Dean had never called him or come by Stanford to see how he was doing or made contact with him.

But it hadn't mattered, because Sam had known, always and with absolute certainty, that Dean would always come to and come through for him if Sam wanted. He'd always had that safety net of knowing that if he ever needed to pick up the phone and ask Dean would have come to help him.

Until the Trickster's object lesson in loss. Sam was convinced the creature hadn't held a grudge against Dean because it had known Dean hadn't _wanted_ to kill it; Dean was a hunter, he was doing his job when he'd taken out the 'janitor' – or thought he had. And that was why, in the end, it had acceded to Sam's pleading and allowed him to save Dean.

The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that the Trickster making him stew for six months along with that 'Travis Bickle in skirts' jibe had been about trying to prepare Sam to live in a world where his eternal safety net wasn't there any more, and wasn't going to be. He would have given the Trickster his soul on the spot had it demanded it of him when he'd woken up and it had been six months earlier and Wednesday morning and Dean had not yet gone alone down to the car.

And, much as he hated to admit it, the Trickster had been right – he'd been a drunken, shambling, incoherent _mess _when Ruby metaphorically hauled him out of his ocean of self-pity and grief. One thing he had sworn to himself when he'd answered that knock and Dean was alive and whole and warm and solid and hugging him back and calling him by that beloved hated nickname of Sammy was that he was never, ever, _ever _going to lose Dean again. He didn't _care _what it took, or what it cost, or if he had to reduce this third rock from the sun to rubble, if it saved Dean, he would do it. He could _not _live without his brother, and he would not.

_So why am I the __**bad guy **__because I'm now the one doing whatever it takes to care for Dean and protect him like he always has me? _The ever-present resentment bubbled up again; did Dean _really _think he didn't _know _that if their situations were reversed, if Dean had the freaky super-duper powers, that Dean would act without mercy or pity to take out anything that threatened Sam?

And yet Dean and Castiel were down on _him_ like a ton of bricks when _he _did exactly that? Did Castiel really want to have to keep fighting his way through hell every other week to re-resurrect Dean if Sam did what they wanted and stopped using his powers and Dean was _killed _because of the angels' less than stellar timing, as 'in the nick of…' department?

And did Castiel _really _think he was fooled by that oh-so-soulful shtick? That he was going to just stand by helplessly and let Castiel take _his_ rightful place in Dean's affections?

Maybe he should lay some Scriptural smackdown on Mr Wings? Hadn't it been Samuel the prophet who'd gone to that ancient King David and condemned him because the king had a large 'flock of sheep' – dozens of wives and concubines – yet had stolen that guy Uriah's sole 'pet lamb' by committing adultery with Uriah's wife Bathsheba? Castiel had a billion angelic 'brothers', literally according to the Bible, which said there were 'myriad of myriads' of them, and apparently one myriad was 10,000.

Dean was the only brother Sam had, so Castiel could go –

_Where had the galangal gone?_

Oh please, please no. Had he been so lost in introspection that he'd lost the – _there_.

_Damn it, first I'm thinking with my dick now I'm psychoanalysing myself into a bored stupor. Get it together Samuel! _

He hastened after the worryingly faint wisp of flakes; he'd already been in here nearly half an hour and from the looks of it whoever the Faerie had gulled into pulling this off had personally visited every nook, cranny and obscure corner of the building, meandering around in a more rambling path than Sam had habitually done during those terrible four months of Dean's death when he'd spent every day blind drunk or trying to be.

At least back in the ballroom it was easy to _see_, though that didn't really help as everyone was in some sort of costume, though thankfully it appeared only Pete had gone 'zombie'. Although…maybe _that_ was the answer as to why he and Dean – and Joe - had escaped? In order for the enchantment to work, maybe the incantation had specified that only anyone within the building _and _wearing a fancy dress outfit would be transformed? It was as good as theory as any.

Automatically he sidestepped a 'Long John Silver' pirate, whose fake parrot was now very real and causing the guy some serious problems with its flapping and beak snapping. He passed Captain Hook, dodged some woman who seemed to be Cleopatra, a kid dressed as Casper the Friendly Ghost and a beefy Babe Ruth as the galangal lazily curled back in on itself –

_Wait. _

He'd missed something. _Rewind_…

Pirate, check, Hook, check, Cleo, check, Casper, check, Babe…Casper…was a _ghost_; and a ghost should be able to flow right through Sam like he wasn't there. So why had it so quickly gotten out of Sam's path, like it knew he couldn't walk through it?

A kid who _wasn't _Casper the Friendly Ghost, a kid _dressed _like Casper…which was a pretty pathetic costume to pick, unless the kid had had to come up with disguise at very, very, _very _short notice…

Sam spun around even as the galangal floated back past his eye-line, just as Casper turned his head and a huge pair of terrified brown eyes peering through holes in the sheet locked with his own blue ones.

The kid took off from a standing start like his butt was on fire, and Sam lunged after him, bursting back into the lobby hard on the boy's heels. For a second Sam regretted unlocking the main doors, preventing what would have been the deeply satisfying sight of watching the kid run full tilt into the unyielding barrier with a meaty _thwack _and bouncing back in a stunned heap.

High-pitched squeaks emanated from under the sheet as the kid pawed frantically at the doors and knocked down the handle to dash frantically out into the night away from the furiously approaching nemesis of Sam -

And the single explosive report of a shotgun echoed in the night.

_Continued in Chapter 24…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

Author's note:

It has been noted that the wording and musings of Sam and Dean in these few chapters is very similar, even identical, and yes, this is deliberate.

I do not presume to pre-empt Kripke, but in an interview about Season 4 he said that he didn't want it to be about 'good brother' versus 'bad brother' or 'right Dean' and 'wrong Sam', but about how _both _brothers each has a valid point of view in some cases – Sam's point that Castiel has not exactly done a stellar job of keeping Dean safe for instance, or the fact that do we really believe Dean wouldn't _also_ do whatever was necessary to use the powers to protect Sam if they were his instead?

I'm trying to capture the flavour of that conflict, and how two people can look at the same events or situation, and reach completely different conclusions, which is particularly fascinating with two characters like Sam and Dean who spend literally 99 percent of their waking and sleeping lives with each other and who, in some ways, have an extraordinary mental synchronicity with each other, yet in other ways have now got this deep psychological chasm of misunderstanding between them. For example, like climate change, where a climate change sceptic looks at information x and believes it supports his theory that climate change is just a profiteering racket used to erode personal freedoms and defraud the pubic, and a climate change believer looks at information x and believes it supports his theory that climate change is a clear and present danger that will feasibly annihilate the human species in this century unless something is done yesterday.

Taking the analogy a step further, in Seasons 1-3, Dean was a hardline climate change sceptic, Sam was the believer. Over Season 4, we've seen those roles flipped so Dean now has the spirituality and willingness to try faith on for size – to risk trusting someone else can be trustworthy, and Sam is the disillusioned pessimist increasingly convinced he can rely on nothing but his own inner fortitude to make it through – but if all you believe in is yourself, what happens when you fall down?

And of course there is the Castiel/Ruby dynamic – just because Castiel is cute and an angel, doesn't mean he is necessarily acting _for_ Dean's best interests. Likewise the fact that Ruby is female and a demon doesn't necessarily mean she is acting _against_ Sam's best interests.

NB – to non-American readers, a '_piñata_' pronounced pin-yada (to rhyme with sin-harder) is a small, hollow object made of some easily breakable material, like straw or pottery or papier-mâché, usually in the form of a human being or a donkey/mule, and filled with sweets (candy) and/or trinkets. It is then hung from the ceiling or a tree branch and blindfolded participants, usually children, attempt to whack it hard enough to break it and get the sweets. This is usually done for birthdays, Christmas or Easter; in Mexican Catholicism, they are used at Christmas as 7-pointed stars representing the 7 Deadly Sins, and the treats inside as the 'good things' these sins prevent people from having – striking the _piñata _with the sticks symbolises beating Evil with Faith and releasing the 'blessings'. There are variations on the tradition around the world, as far afield as Denmark and most Hispanic/Latino cultures.

NNB – John gave the Impala to Dean when Dean was 18 (1997) from which point John had the truck we see in the show, so in Sam's memories until he was 15 in 1997, the Winchester vehicle was the Impala.


	24. Chapter 24

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 24**

Leaving through the main door, but being careful to close it properly behind him, Sam moved to where the kid lay, sprawled starfish like flat on his back from the rock-salt impact. A faint wisp of smoke curled up from Joe's shotgun.

Dean roughly pulled the grubby sheet off to reveal a teenage boy of somewhere between about 16 to 19 years of age with dirty blond hair and a slightly podgy face, now slackly unconscious.

"Jerry Marcynuk." Joe murmured.

"You don't seem overwhelmed with shock," Sam commented.

Joe shrugged. "I know his folks, Liz and Bob - his dad's the Morning Hill postmaster. He's a bit spoilt but just a typical teenage boy – a petulant, stroppy know-it-all."

"And I always thought that was just _Sam_," Dean muttered at a pitch designed to _just _be perfectly audible, sure that he saw Castiel's lips twitch out of the corner of his eye.

"The galangal led you to him?" Joe enquired, possibly seeking to divert Sam's intended, vicious, retort.

"Almost," Sam admitted, and quickly explained his theory of why they three were unchanged by the transformation.

"It works," Dean agreed. "We three escape because we've no costume, and Jerry here was exempt because _he_ was performing the ritual in the car park – presumably not in a bed sheet – but if he wanted to move about inside, cut a couple of eye holes in the thing and its Casper the Friendly…"

"He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer…but why'd he do something like this?" Joe mused.

" So not caring," Sam declared _his_ position. "I just want to frag the Faerie, kick _his_ ass and go back to bed."

Dean nodded, having to admit he shared Sam's view at this point. The inner motivations of some tortured adolescent were not his bag.

As if on cue, Marcynuk gave a low groan. They waited and watched as he twitched and started to move, before finally managing to sit up and then wobble shakily to his feet. Abruptly his eyes widened as he took in Joe, Sam and Dean and he tensed.

Sam levelled his shotgun at dead centre of torso. "You so much as bat an _eyelash _and I'll give you both barrels."

"Wha- I- I- " he was trembling violently and was barely coherent.

"Shut up!" snapped Dean. "We know you turned your town in a wholesale Monster Mash, and so now you're going to turn them all back again."

"I- It wasn't – I didn't – I mean for this to –" the kid actually began to blubber.

"We're not interested in your sorry-assed whining now you got caught," Sam cut off the flow sharply. "Just reverse the ritual enchantment you made and restore these people."

"W-W-Why?"

Sam looked at Dean. Dean looked at Sam. _Why?_ Was this little cockroach for real?

"Well for a start, so we don't beat you to within an inch of your miserable little life you – " Joe Briddon, provoked finally to anger, began.

" No! I- I- mean, it'll all go back to normal in a coupla hours!"

"What you mean?" Dean pounced.

Jerry nodded in jerky terror towards the hotel. "It'll wear off…two hours, tops. Everything will be, y'know…"

Once again Sam's eyes sought Dean's. _And when has it ever been that easy?_

_Right._

"How do you know?" challenged Sam.

"K-know what?"

"That your little magnum opus will tidy itself neatly away, no harm no foul." Sam expounded in a tone that indicated he believed it about as much as he believed in the Easter Bunny.

"Um…well she said it would."

"And 'she' would be…?" Sam prompted.

"The chick, the girl who told me the spell." Jerry finally got some colour back in his cheeks as it dawned on him he wasn't about to be slaughtered on the spot – yet.

"Okay, Jer'." Dean drawled. "Give us the Cliff Notes, from the top."

Clearly unaware that he was not covering himself in glory here, Jerry whined about how the 'stacked hottie' he'd asked to go to the fancy dress ball with him had picked his two-years-elder brother instead, "…I mean it's not _fair _man, _I'm_ on the _football team_ and she's into _Lee, _my _saddo geek _brother? And he woulda got it all 'cause Todd Grieve told everyone how she goes like a 'ho' and gives real good –"

"Did it ever _occur _to you that she _might_ have been more _receptive_ to your invitation if you acted like she was a _person_ and not a blow up doll, and that 'Todd Grieve' might be _lying _through his rat-bastard teenage teeth 'cause she had the _brains_ to see through him like glass and blow him off?" Dean sliced through the petulance, seeing his own contemptuous irritation reflected on Sam's face.

"Huh?"

"Just skip the detailed recounting of hormonal lust mush and get to the monster mash part," Sam advised him; he recognised the look on Dean's face that meant the kid was going to get a pasting if he carried on much longer – and he wouldn't interfere; there _had _been extenuating circumstances in _his_ initially being a jerk in his treatment of Ruby, but this kid was just a self-absorbed little prick.

The upshot was that Jerry had refused to come to the ball when his parents had refused to forbid his brother to attend with the girl Jerry wanted and he had thrown a monumental sulk – though of course _he_ didn't put it that way. Mooching about what was effectively a ghost town, he had met this 'skinny chick' who had asked him if he was okay and, after listening to his tale of woe, offered him the chance to 'get even'.

"Wait a minute…" Sam cut across the litany of 'but it wasn't my fault'. "Your brother, Lee…he came _here_, with this girl? With your _parents_?"

"Uh yeah…"

"You _knew _your _family _was in there and you _still did this_?" Sam's voice dropped to a sibilant hiss, and Dean made a very low, snarling sound that raised the hairs on the back of Joe's neck.

Marcynuk was properly paralysed in petrified terror between the two younger hunters, whose attitudes were now purely predator – Joe saw the anxiety and alarm on the white-guy angel's face – Castiel – that scared him most of all.

"Do you have any _idea _of how _lucky_ you are that you parents weren't _ripped away _from you –" Sam was snarling it but both Winchesters were seething; the boy was perilously close to being eviscerated on the spot.

And not entirely without justification, as Joe was sure both 'angels' were perfectly well aware; he kept his ear to the ground – and Bill Harvelle had been his and Mary's half-brother – these boys had lost so much, sacrificed so much, that Family was sacred to them.

"It wasn't really going to work!" cried Jerry, restarting the blubbering. "I mean…I thought…it's not real, nothing will _happen_…"

"Until it did," Joe put in, "at which point I bet _you_ scrammed like a jackrabbit."

The flush across the boy's face told him the accuracy of his claim.

"And then you came crawling back, threw that sheet over you in a half-assed disguise and went inside to admire your _handiwork_," Dean spat.

"No!" Jerry shook his head so violently Joe was surprised it didn't fall off. "I…wanted to find mom and dad and Lee…but…it was _real_, you can't tell who's who."

"So what was your plan – hang around until the spell wore off then just pretend you'd decided not to be a dick after all and attend the party, regardless of how lame your costume was?" Dean summarised astutely.

_Continued in Chapter 25…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

Author's Note:

Jerry Marcynuk is a combination of Jerry Wanek and John Marcynuk, the show's art directors/production designers – it was their glorious motel room designs that made me come up with the hideous honeymoon suite of Aunt Eliza, and write this story around that one image I had. Jerry's parents and brother's names Bob, Liz and Lee are taken from Robert Reader, Liz Goldwyn and Lee Ann, who are all set/art designers on the show; Todd Grieve is from Todd Pittson and George A. Grieve, two of the production managers – why should I struggle to come up with imaginative character names when I can just trawl through the crew list?!


	25. Chapter 25

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 25**

"Okay, Jerry," snapped Sam irascibly, "Take it from the top, slowly, clearly and don't try and stretch your IQ past words of one syllable – tell us _exactly _what you did, step-by-step, starting from the point in your mega-sulk when this girl suddenly appeared and acted like your new best friend."

Immediately again whining that he 'never thought it would work', Jerry nevertheless seemed to realise that the ice wasn't so much thin as already rapidly melting out from under him before the blow-torches of the hunters' anger.

Apparently recognising the small calibre intellect she was working with, the Faerie had given him 'Evil Rituals For Dummies 101'. She'd helped him gather the rocks to make into the 'camp fire' circle – at which point Joe witheringly informed Jerry _that _should have set alarms bells ringing in his head, as a Faerie broke a sweat about as happily as Al Capone had done his tax returns.

Unfortunately that analogy had gone right over the kid's head with his blank-faced response of 'Who?' prompting Joe to mutter that it was no wonder the world was going to hell – literally – if people were too stupid to learn enough about history to avoid repeating it – did they think the Good Lord had inspired King Solomon to warn, 'there is nothing _new _under the sun' for His own amusement or because He was trying to make it clear that the smart people were the ones who learned from the past mistakes of others and avoided making the same idiot moves themselves?

Little Miss Helpful had also provided the animals for him to sacrifice – a couple of rabbits, a fox and a kitten, all 'unconscious' –

"…and a honkin' big steak knife she said was some kinda ceremonial dagger," Jerry shrugged, "So I did the animals, and…the ritual and said the incantation –"

"What did you do in what order?" Sam reined him in. "A lot of occult rites are like certain food recipes, what you end up with depends on what order you add the ingredients to the bowl and how you mix them in – and what you leave out." He recapped Jerry's explanation so far, "You made the circle, you cut one animal's throat and used the blood to make the symbols on the stones, then you placed the wood for the fire, then you added the herbs, then you got the knife, then you slit the throats of the other animals, and -?"

"Uh…er…"

Dean gave a low groan. "We're back to the BSI, I can tell…"

"BSI?" Joe frowned.

"Brain-Stabbing Imagery," Dean clarified before scrunching up his face in disgust at Jerry, "You did it, you little _pervert_, didn't you? You got your weenie wiener out of your pants and jacked off before you lit the fire!"

"No!" But Jerry's face was almost eggplant-purple with mortification and since his ability to lie was about as convincing as his ghost costume –

"I wish we had time for me to take a break and gouge out my mind's eye," Sam muttered, "but I suspect time is what we don't have, so, what was the incantation, genius?"

Jerry stuck his hand in his jacket pocket, oblivious that the sudden movement had never put him so close to a violent death as all three hunters tensed reflexively. He pulled out a folded brown thing that crinkled loudly and opened it up to reveal it to be a sheet of actual _parchment_, clearly extremely old, about eight inches across and twelve inches long, with lines of 'symbols' or runes, clearly grouped into what had to be words, written – or even printed – neatly across it, about the same size as an '18pt' font; presumably the language of the Faerie.

Clearing his throat, Jerry began, "Oh-she-tam, bay-list-hack, foe-mar-apt –"

"Wait a minute!" Sam exclaimed, reaching out and plucking the parchment from Jerry's fingers. Scanning down it, he jabbed the barrel of his sawn-off shotgun at a random word about a third down the page halfway along one line and held it out to Jerry. "What does that word say?"

"Uh…" Jerry's lips quivered slightly as he scanned down the page.

"I don't believe it!" Sam stared at the idiot in utter contempt as he yanked the parchment back off him. "Some girl you've _never laid eyes on before_ gives you explicit instructions on how to do something very dangerous and probably _fatal _to your family and you blithely just do it because the off-chance of maybe getting to get your clammy mitts on her tits and your dick inside her means _more_ to you than your parents' lives, than your brother?!"

"That's not how it was!" Jerry protested, but his face was still guiltily flushed.

"For all _you_ know this is a recipe for Polish _pierogi_!" sneered Sam. "This mysterious girl hung around for maybe ten minutes before she disappeared as suddenly as she came yet you swallowed everything she said hook, line and sinker – you gulped it down whole without chewing!"

Joe sighed deeply and shook his head slowly at Jerry's flustered, distraught face. "Son, you make me _despair_ of what of my own sex is like today in general. You're so full of crap in seeing girls as nothing other than sex _objects_ for your own selfish, greedy gratification it just never _occurs_ to you that women have _minds of their own_ and are perfectly intelligent and _more _than capable of arranging things to get what _they_ want _their _way - and _more _than bright enough to lie like rugs to gullible idiots like _you_ that they can lead around by your dick!"

Heartily wishing he'd given in to his earlier impulse and simply strangled the jerk in the hotel, Sam held out the paper to Joe. "Look, you're our resident expert on all things Faerie. How are your translation skills?"

"Patchy," but Joe took the parchment and squinted at it, though fortunately the unknown Mr & Mrs Hanson, presumably transformed in the hotel like everyone else, hadn't skimped on the parking lot lighting.

Amazingly, Jerry still had some self-pitying tears left inside him, "I didn't mean it! Waiting until the spell wore off was all I could think to do… I just want it all to go back to how it was…"

"That's the thing, Jerry," Dean told him, "in real life there is no second take and no 'we'll fix it in the dub'. Nothing can ever be how it was – " hearing the weary bitterness in his own voice, he shut up; his eyes met Sam's and they both glanced away from each other, too many raw and sore feelings exposed.

"Uh-oh."

Now Sam and Dean did look at each other, in weary resignation and with _'ah, yet another totally unsurprising free side order of extra doom to go_' expressions.

"I can't read it all, but I don't need to, 'cause boy, you've been well and truly screwed with your pants on," Joe told Jerry, before showing Dean and Sam a 'word' on the parchment, "That translates literally as 'life-fire-orb', or the sun to you and me. Those words before it I'm sure means 'to rise up' – "

"So it's talking about sunrise? Dawn?" surmised Dean.

"I'd say so. The big bad is _that _word, just there, that's the kicker," Joe warned, his face grim and very unhappy. "It literally means 'to carve into a rock', and the nearest translation would be something like…'to be sealed', or 'resolute', or 'to become irrevocable."

Neither Sam or Dean were slow on the uptake. "Crap."

"What? What?" Jerry looked from one brother to the other in panic as their grim went up to DefCon2.

"'What? What?'" parroted Dean sarcastically back at him, "I'll tell you _what – _your little Faerie friend played you like a violin. She lied like a rug. The transformations will not _wear off_ in a couple of hours, Jerry-boy. Unless the spell is broken _before _the sun comes up, the transformation becomes _permanent_."

_Continued in Chapter 26…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	26. Chapter 26

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 26**

"But my family - !"

"_Now _he gets it," Dean commented generally.

"Sunrise is only a couple of hours away," Jerry babbled in panic, "If my family get stuck like that forever –"

"It won't be forever."

Something in Sam's voice must have got straight through to Jerry's hindbrain because he broke off and looked at Sam with prescient terror.

Dean, and Joe, and both angels were _also _looking at him - but he said it anyway. "If we can't undo what you did, we'll have to kill them – we'll have to kill everyone in there."

"You're crazy," whispered Jerry staring at Sam as if he'd suddenly sprouted another head. "He's crazy, right?" he appealed to the others in terror.

"Sam…" Dean stopped because he had no real idea of what he wanted to say, or how to say it – Castiel and Joe were both shocked, even Uriel looked surprised.

Glaring at Dean and Castiel, Sam snarled, "Could you two _please _change the '_whatever_ Sam does is _bad_ even though we can't think of any reason _why_ right now' tune just for one minute? Dean, you said it yourself, at least two of those Count Draculas were balding with bureaucrat's butt."

"So?" Dean wasn't ready to embrace the concept of mass murder on the basis that Transylvania's most famous export was a crappy look for middle-aged middle-managers.

"_So_, if the transformation gets made _forever_, what happens when those folks manage to get out of the hotel – and they will break out, eventually – and go stumbling off every which way but loose?" Sam challenged them all, including an uncomfortable looking Castiel as he began to see Sam's point. "Come on Dean, remember Lucy and those other poor girls Dixon turned vamp to replace his family before Gordon showed up?"

Dean gave a sharp nod, immediately understanding the point he knew Sam was about to make to the others; poor Lucy, not even the original dumb blonde, doomed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time seeking the wrong 'good time'. She had been so far in denial she'd convinced herself she was hallucinating when she'd eaten two men and chowed down on a third, courtesy of not knowing she'd been turned into a vampire by desperate Dixon, terrified of spending his eternal life alone.

Sam felt slightly better as he saw the instant comprehension in Dean's eyes – unlike so many, including Gordon Walker and Azazel and Bela Talbot, he had never made the mistake of believing that Dean was the cocky-but-dumb brawn half of their double act to his 'brains'.

Impelled to make it clear to Castiel that he _wasn't_ like Uriel – a bloodthirsty homicidal maniac - Sam said it anyway, "How many _seconds_ do all of you think any one of those Count Draculas in there are going to last if they come up against a _real _vampire nest? What about those at-least-three women who _all _really _are _that English Queen Elizabeth I? Or the Kacick brother who really is a lion now? None of those people in there are real vampires, or werewolves, or wizards – they have none of the natural – or supernatural - instincts they should have to help them survive in the real world or when they encounter the real versions of what they supposedly are. They're all as helpless as newborn babies."

"And humanely putting them down would be far more merciful than letting them stumble about the place, hurting innocent people and slowly starving to death and so on." Dean acknowledged grimly.

"There's near as damn it the entire town in there," Joe murmured, almost to himself, softly.

Once again Sam looked across at Dean, each knowing what the other was thinking, and neither appreciating the irony that _they_ were now stuck in the same situation as when they'd forced Castiel and Uriel not to murder an entire town's population to prevent the rising of Samhain.

"Please…There's got to be something to _fix_ it…" Jerry looked from side to side at Dean and Sam and back again, his voice shaking with comprehending horror. "_Something_…Mr Briddon?"

"Well…if we can trap the Faerie…I can force it to undo the enchantment." Joe suggested to the Winchesters hopefully. "These folks have been good to me for years, they've always accepted me and tolerated my occasional disappearances and 'eccentricities' without interfering. Iffen there's some hope o' savin' 'em, I'm game."

"How confident are you?" Dean insisted, "'Cause something tells me we're only gonna get one shot at this."

"Very," Joe spoke with a reassuringly decisive calm that was in no way boastful, but matter-of-fact. "Some hunters have a…I guess you'd call it a sub-specialist niche…in the trade – some it's wendigous or rakshasas, others it's vampires or vetalas, witches or revenants. I've made it my business to learn every bit of lore even remotely tangentially connected to the _Slaugh Sidhe_."

Which was Irish Gaelic for 'the fairy host', host as in 'war host' – thousands or even millions – not a singular possessed host…

_Works for me, _Sam shrugged at Dean, communicating in usual fluid body-language simpatico.

I got nothing, Dean admitted with an eyebrow raise/shoulder-shrug combo, and I seriously doubt we're gonna persuade Bert and Ernie over there to just waggle their wings and tidy this mess away for us.

_Another snippet from the file marked 'duh'_, Sam agreed.

"Okay, what do we need to do to trap it? We're all out of galangal." Dean pointed out; although the Impala's secret under-trunk compartment would have made any mediaeval apothecary emerald with envy, very limited space - and the desire of two red-blooded heterosexual males to avoid smelling, in any way, 'floral' - meant that they had only the barest amounts of herbs, oils, resins and potions that might be useful or relevant. Some stuff, like Frankincense, Myrrh, Saffron – and yes, African Dream Root - was hideously expensive even for a teaspoonful, or was extremely difficult to obtain – like Pearson's Hawthorn, once common to America's Deep South, but which had last been seen growing in the back yard of a San Antonio, Texas 'house of ill repute' back in '91 and was believed to be extinct.

"We've already got most of what we need to set up a 'containment field'," Joe assured. "We only really need oak, ash and hawthorn for Jerry here to use –"

"Me?" Jerry squeaked.

"Burning oak, ash and hawthorn is a way to summon a Faerie." Joe explained. "But if you've got nothing flammable and you have dried leaves from all three trees you can rub them together between your palms to create friction. And it won't be any problem for Jerry here. The Faerie's not here right now but you can bet your ass she's intending to show up before too long to see the results of her little plan. If Jerry summons her, she'll probably come straight away – "

"And since she's already encountered his _towering intellect_, she hopefully won't suspect anything." Dean snarked, ignoring the barely audible 'unh' noises Jerry seemed unaware he was making.

_Continued in Chapter 27…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	27. Chapter 27

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 27**

Under Joe's direction, they went and took half a dozen of the stones from the campfire ring and placed them in the middle of the better-lit parking lot; since it was their layout not visibility that mattered, they could hide them under some of the cars, similarly to a Devil's Trap. Using scraped soil and gravel chippings mixed with some of Sam and Dean's salt, Joe 'joined' the stones together in a symbol with marked out lines he carefully poured from stone to stone. Joe then placed one final stone on the ground about a foot in front of Jerry's feet – that 'centre stone' would act in the same manner as a lodestone drawing iron filings to it and trap the Faerie in place, as if she were in a giant jar, until the stone was destroyed or removed.

Fortunately, The Impala did have small pouches of dried ash, oak and hawthorn leaves that Joe gave to Jerry, instructing him to cup the leaves in his hands, then rub his palms together so the leaves disintegrated whilst he called out to the Faerie.

"Just keep calling that you need to talk to her; the opportunity to gloat and laugh in your face will bring her running," Joe told Jerry, who had gone from purple to pallid.

With Castiel and Uriel standing in front of the driver's side front and rear doors of the Impala, Dean took up position on the steps up to the hotel's main doors, with Sam out towards the corner of the hotel wall where they'd gone around earlier to get in through the kitchen and Joe standing back in the middle of the entrance to the parking lot. They would have, at most, no more than a single second before the Faerie realised Jerry wasn't alone.

Hopefully she would appear directly in front of Jerry above the 'lodestone', in which case all three hunters had to fire off a rock-salt round into the air – that distraction and multiple-directional potential threat should startle her into freezing for a moment, just long enough for Jerry to hop back so he was outside the 'containment field' imprisoning her.

Both Dean and Sam were personally more worried about Jerry than anything else; he'd gone from white to grey when Joe had forcefully impressed upon him that he needed, instantly, 'to get out of Dodge' when the Faerie manifested. If he didn't jump back out of the way in that – maybe half-a-second – of grace he had, he would be trapped in the invisible 'mystical cell' and since the Faerie had retractable razor sharp claws they disguised as fingernails, the enraged creature would literally shred him alive within seconds, far too quickly for the hunters to break the containment and get him out – nor would they try, since Joe pointed out that the choice of saving the lives of over two hundred people versus that of one petulant brat whose own temper tantrum had brought this on himself was the very definition of 'no brainer'.

"Get to it, Jer'" Dean ordered, in no mood to hang around for what remained of the night; he knew it was, for now, only his imagination that the blackness of the night sky seemed to be lightening slightly, but it wouldn't be for very much longer.

His voice quavering dangerously close to a far from macho squeak, Jerry obediently rubbed his hands together palm to palm, mixing and crumbling the dried leaves as he called out to 'Danu-she' that he needed to talk to her _right away_.

According to Joe, the name was another Faerie conceit. In Ireland, the Faerie were known as the _Sidhe_ – pronounced 'she' to rhyme with 'flee', and one of their old names was _Tuatha de Dannan, _'offspring of the goddess Danu'. Basically by calling herself _Danusidhe_, the Faerie was naming herself the Goddess Danu of the Faerie, which was, according to Joe, perfectly typical egomania for the species.

Dean licked his lips, seeing Sam unconsciously mirror the gesture – if they screwed this up, the Faerie would escape – and he and Sam and Joe would have to go into that hotel with their shotguns loaded with real shells, not rock salt, and gank everyone inside, including nice, friendly Pete…and that tiny little angel girl currently slumbering in his Impala. And if he had to do _that_, Jerry Marcynuk would not live to regret what he'd done –

There was a sort of faint _schloo _sound, like when you sucked up the dregs of a thick milkshake through a straw, and then a figure appeared, actually floating, in front of Jerry Marcynuk, who squawked like a chicken laying an egg.

The figure also shrieked in shock as three shotguns were fired together into the sky and it froze in momentary confusion as it tried to determine the direction of the danger. Jerry, doubtless moving with more speed and more single-minded focus than he'd ever done anything in his life, jumped backwards like the Faerie was a drunk about to barf on his shoes and tripped himself up, sprawling comically on his butt – but most importantly of all, well clear of the Faerie.

Sam approached the Faerie, not enthused by her appearance; at first glance, apart from the very obvious traditional gossamer 'fairy wings' fluttering from her back, she was the same size as a girl of about six or seven years of age – which was Lillith's preferred way to manifest herself; not a reassuring comparison.

With a hiss, she spun around to face him and the illusion of child-likeness was broken. Up close, she looked like a tiny scale-model of the TV star, heiress Paris Hilton – even down to the flaxen hair and scanty clothing. She was wearing some sort of gauzy pastel powder-blue mini dress that only covered her tiny but proportionately sized breasts to just above the nipples and which ended in a short of undulating floaty-type hem barely an inch below the tops of her thighs. Her legs were completely bare and she wore a pair of powder-blue slip-on shoes that sparkled due to being covered in what Sam didn't doubt were real diamonds. There had to be some sort of enchantment on them because even though she was floating in mid-air and they were strapless slip-ons, they adhered perfectly to the soles of her feet as she were walking down the street.

However, whatever her personality quirks and character flaws, Paris Hilton did not have eyes that went to vertical slits, like cats and reptiles, nor did she, even when she hissed furiously at someone, display a mouthful of tiny but razor-sharp teeth way too reminiscent of 'Jake' the Crocotta, or the Changelings that had come too close to killing Lisa Braidan and her and Dean's son, Ben, in Morning Hill, Indiana. She tried to lung at Sam, but bounced back clearly having impacted on some sort of invisible barrier -

_Works for me_.

"_Hunters_!" she spat the word in disgusted contempt.

"Okay," announced Joe, bringing her attention to the elderly hunter, "you're going to reverse the transformation enchantment you got the boy blunder over there to perform you, _right now_."

She snorted, "What, so you can just kill me anyway? Do I look as stupid as him?"

Sam had to admit she had a point as she sneered at where Jerry had finally wobbled to his feet and was fidgeting nervously, looking at her in wide-eyed shock. Clearly the Faerie must be able cast some sort of glamour to disguise their slit-eyes and fang-mouths and also appear to be height-appropriate adult humans, because if Jerry had fallen for her spiel and she'd looked like _this _– or, yuk! – if she'd appeared as a little girl _a la_ Lillith's favourite MO, there was a great deal more wrong with the kid than a bit of self-centred teenage angst.

"Negate the enchantment, and we will allow you to live." Joe offered with surprisingly equanimity, probably aware that they would have to let her go to get her co-operation

"Why should I believe that?"

"Because right now you're a fish in a barrel, bitch," Dean told her bluntly, "and we're the ones with the guns."

Continued in Chapter 28…

© 2009, CD Stewart

Author's Note: yet again I offer my apologies. I am retyping the chapters I lost when my hard drive was corrupted as fast as I can! There aren't that many more chapters to go, but I'm working from memory and there are a lot of other documents I need to retype from memory as well.


	28. Chapter 28

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 28**

She gave him a fulminating look that should have killed him on the spot – or at least had him bursting spontaneously into flames, but she was caught dead centre of Joe's mystical prison-trap and Jerry was several feet beyond her reach.

However, what they had on their side was reputation – hunters, generally speaking, apart from a few good-gone-bad…or bad-gone-totally-bonkers like Gordon Walker…the majority of hunters tended to honour a bargain made, even if that bargain was made with a supernatural entity. Sometimes the only thing a hunter had in his her or her arsenal was that reputation for keeping their word; hunters also depended greatly on _other _hunters and associated types like clairvoyants and the like – those that gained a reputation for duplicity and untrustworthiness amongst paranoid, professional killers that customarily spent 24/7 armed to the teeth in some way and who had turned the 'vengeance vendetta' into an art form did not tend to live very long.

"Very well. Release me and I'll undo it."

Dean laughed, "Yeah, 'cause we just fell off the turnip truck!"

"Undo the enchantment, and _after _we've quality checked your product, we'll release you." Joe told her. "Which will also be _after _sunrise. Oh, and just so I'm absolutely clear – if I'm not thoroughly satisfied with your efforts, I'll leave you in that cell, and I'll play matchmaker for you with a nice, pointy-jawed Faerie guy for you…I think _Fi-anuan_ is currently making some major headlines amongst your species, isn't he?"

Her face turned a deeply unattractive shade of mauve and she snarled at Joe.

"Get warmed up, take your time." Joe told her with a smirk, and backed off a little, moving closer to Castiel and Uriel, who the Faerie seemed not to have noticed, or at least, apparently didn't care were a pair of angels from the look of it.

Sam and Dean moved to join him. "How can we be sure she won't try and pull a Texas Longhorn Bull trick on us?" Dean asked in a low-voiced aside, referring back to Joe's earlier anecdote.

"She won't, she'll do anything to prevent me summoning a _male_ Faerie." Joe responded with confidence. "You think that _human _society currently has big problems with 'relationship issues' and increasing male-female hostility since women's lib? Trust me, we got nothin' on the Faerie."

"Not that we're arguing, but wouldn't threatening to go 'extraordinary rendition' on her ass be more _effective_ than threatening to go Oprah?" Dean pointed out quietly.

Joe shook his head, "I know it sounds weird, but part of the reason the Faerie are so sociopathic, particularly with each other, is that their species has a colossal gender imbalance problem. Some reckon the Neanderthals did it to them during their war."

"Gender imbalance?" Dean looked at the fuming Faerie, who seemed completely feminine to his eyes.

"With the Faerie, gestation lasts only three weeks, the offspring is small and is capable of looking after itself entirely within forty-eight hours of being born. In of itself, that wouldn't really cause any problems for the Faerie as a species," Joe explained, "the problem is that something like one-hundred-ninety out of every two hundred or so Faerie born are _male_."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Getting a prom date must be fun."

"In the lore, fairies – the Faerie, I guess - always seem to be portrayed as female." Sam pointed out.

"They're also portrayed as sweet, adorable and cute," Joe retorted dryly, "and we know how much of a crock _that_ is. The thing is, most Faerie people do encounter tend to be female because the males spend most of their time sneaking around trying to…what'd you say earlier?..to 'gank' each other. The Faerie are like species like lions or deer or horses – the most successful are the ones who can pass on their genetic code as much as possible, but something like 98 percent of male Faerie live and die without ever _once _getting laid."

"Yet again I find myself hampered by an inability to _care_," muttered Dean.

"Ditto," Sam admitted.

"Me neither," Joe shrugged, "'cepting how _useful_ it is if you want to keep one of those little not-ever-gonna-be-a-ladies in line. With our human species, there's a vast disparity between the sexes. Men and women have different organs, different body chemistry, different brain chemistry; men think in straight lines, women in spirals, you name it, we're _different_."

"Oh yeah, we got that," Dean put in with a lascivious leer, not particularly interested in a psycho-sociological lecture on modern gender norms.

Joe gave him that look reserved by the wise for smart-mouthed slackers who lacked the sense to listen and learn to their elders. "Those differences have a huge impact on us. Female humans tend to be shorter and physically weaker than male humans; conversely they're also more emotionally stable and have a higher pain threshold than males. Adult humans of _both_ sexes are also fertile _all the time_ – the disparity of size to strength ratio means that a man who decided he wanted a particular woman, or at least her genes, contributing the other 50 percent to match his for his offspring, would generally speaking be able to overpower her and impregnate her whenever he wanted, unless she was self-defence trained and using contraceptives. I'm not being insulting – because of Mama Nature, a woman and a man get into a knock-down drag-out toe-to-toe punch-up and the woman _is _going to lose."

"And the Faerie are different how?" Sam challenged, fighting the urge to fidget as guiltily as Jerry was doing, aware of how he'd acted towards Ruby in the early days after she'd seduced him.

He'd done a fair bit of…verbally coercing if not outright overpowering, and never given thought to any lack-of-contraceptive consequences until it would normally have been far, far too late, but when the light-bulb finally had flickered on in his dense male brain, Ruby had explained that, as demon, she was sterile, and that sterility infused the body of Jane Doe; evil was destructive, not creative – it damaged, it stunted, it killed; it could not nourish or nurture or procreate.

"With the Faerie that size-strength disparity doesn't exist." Joe explained quietly, nodding at where the female Faerie floated in mid-air, obviously concentrating on something. "Both sexes are equally matched in terms of speed and power; a male and female _Faerie _get into a physical fight and the winner is often anyone's guess. But female Faerie are _only fertile_ when their wings are clipped or literally tied together to prevent them flying, and because all Faerie are paranoid egomaniacal sociopaths, a female Faerie is almost _impossible _to sneak up on and hit over the head with your best Me Tarzan-You Jane caveman club. Female Faerie have so much time to wander around the world creating mayhem because male Faerie spend most of their time concentrating on wiping each other out –"

"But their second priority is getting close enough to a female to tangle up her wings," Dean got it, "and she knows we could serve her up gift-wrapped on a platter because she can't escape the confinement field, so she couldn't stop a male clipping her wings if we summoned one here and let it into that 'cage'."

"Got it in one," Joe grinned. "I try and keep my ear to the ground with a lot of things; that male Faerie I mentioned? According to rumours I've heard, he's played smarter not harder by _paying_ things like Ghouls and Rawheads to kill his fellowmen – or male Faerie – while he's concentrated on capturing as many females as he can. Allegedly he _cuts off _their wings so they're permanently in oestrus and then chains them up in some secret cave where he keeps them all constantly pregnant; rumour is he's got at least three females in his harem and has entire battalions of Faerie offspring. You can take this to the bank – Little Miss Danusidhe will do _anything _to avoid getting caught by Fi-anuan."

Sam sincerely hoped Joe's assessment was right. He caught one of the brief glances Dean cast towards the Impala, and knew it would absolutely devastate Dean if this failed and they were forced to humanely destroy the occupants of the hotel – and that little girl.

Dean never discussed Lisa Braeden or her son, but from what little Sam had seen of the kid, he was simply too much 'Mini-Me' to be anything other than Dean's son. He'd never pointed out to Dean that a 'blood test' was pretty much ineffective when it came to paternity, especially as it brought up memories of Stanford and Jess – one of her older sister's friends had been in some sort of love triangle thing and had had a baby by one of the men involved. While testing the blood of mother, baby and putative father could rule out a man in certain circs, if both or all the adults in question happened to have the same blood type, you were stuck.

Only a DNA test would give conclusive results. But Sam suspected that Dean knew that perfectly well, and had not pressed the issue because he was _afraid_ insisting would confirm that Ben was his son…or, if that dream Sam had witnessed when they were trying to save Bobby from Crazy Jeremy, that Ben _wasn't _his son. Sam often wondered how often Dean had that dream, even now…

He also suspected that Lisa herself had not pushed the issue for exactly the same fear as Dean. She'd twice tried to send Dean away – had she been acting out of selfishness, a desire to keep 'her' son for herself and not have to share him with a father who, without question, would have adored him, like too many women did these days, wanting a baby without wanting to acknowledge that baby was 50 percent someone else and grew up into a child who wanted and needed to have a father in his or her life? Or had she done that and told a few fibs about Ben's paternity out of the motives Sam hoped she had – that when her fake son literally combusted into an inferno in front of her terrified eyes she realised how much innocent people, and Sam, depended on hunters like Dean being there to save them, and understood he needed to do that without a guilt trip over abandoning his child burdening his soul?

And that was the problem, because encountering Ben had caused a sea change in Dean's attitudes – before, a child had been just one more interchangeable vic' to be saved in whatever interchangeable job they were on. But since saving Ben, Dean saw Ben in every terrified little boy, and saw his and Lisa's potential daughter in every frightened little girl who looked at them with teary eyes and hope he and Dean could save them from the scary monsters -

"It is done!" The Faerie cried suddenly, folding her arms and glaring at Joe Briddon defiantly. "The enchantment is broken; at dawn, all will revert to humanity again."

"Seriously? It's all okay?" Jerry Marcynuk looked at the hunters with eager hope.

And as they automatically looked back at him, Sam saw - a split-second too late - that the boy's nervous foot-scuffling had obliterated a big chunk of one of the protective lines that made the containment field actually work, as opposed to being just a silly pattern of rocks and gravely squiggles laid out in a parking lot.

And with an ear-splitting shriek of triumph, the Faerie effectively 'escaped' through the 'hole', disappearing, quite literally, in a small flash of blue light and a wisp of white smoke.

Continued in Chapter 29…

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

Author's Note: It's been mentioned to me that I have 'tweaked' slightly Dean and Lisa's initial _liaison _(see chapters 16, 17, 18). However, I consider there to be enough fudging in the episode (Season 3, _The Kids Are Alright_) to do this – although Lisa was a yoga teacher living in her own 'loft' apartment it was never stated how or where they had met, though the closing scenes of the episode Lisa's conversation with Dean implied that it had actually been a bar.

I also have to say that I wanted Lisa to be a more realistic and nicer character than she was written – I wanted her to have depth not superficiality. Obviously there were only 40 minutes of show, and the episode's primary function was a) to showcase to Dean that he could have a potential future other than hunting, and b) to further the Sam-blonde-Ruby storyline from The Magnificent Seven.

Although Cindy Sampson did wonders with the sparse material she had as Lisa Braeden, I was disappointed when the end wrap up scenes implied that Ben's dad was some leather-clad biker-type hunk she'd casually picked up in bar at the same time she'd picked up Dean. That implication made 'old Lisa' seem to be a shallow, promiscuous slut of no real intelligence or of any real depth of character – which was unpleasant; the add on implication that accidentally having a child automatically made her grow up and be good mother is, unfortunately, fantasy not reality. If childbirth was all it took to turn a selfish, irresponsible woman into a good mother, most of the world's problems would be fixed.

Promiscuous people, male and female, tend to be damaged people, with low self-esteem and no self-respect. Inside they feel worthless and unlovable, so run scared of genuine emotional connections and turn sex into a mechanical pastime, their carousel of interchangeable, instantly forgotten partners usually made more hazy by liberal alcohol or drug intake so they can ignore how shallow and meaningless it all is. Dean Winchester, admittedly promiscuous, is classic textbook – serious daddy issues, feelings of being worth less than a favoured sibling, fears that he is some not intrinsically worthy of being loved, etc, etc. If the Lisa Braeden character had been like that it was unlikely she would have been very good in the maternal department, as she would probably have aborted and carried on partying as the good time had by all.

The 'I did a blood test when he was a baby' routine implication that there were several candidates also didn't work from the episode viewpoint. Nicholas Elia's 'Ben' was simply too good a Mini-Me not to be Dean Winchester's son – the way he had his hair, to them both taking a mouthful of cake at the same instant, to Ben giving Dean his jacket and helping the other kids escape first, etc. He was too much like Dean in attitude and mannerisms not to be his son, which made Lisa's 'admission' that she done a blood test when Ben was a baby too jarring with what we'd already seen in the episode to provide the intended ambiguity that Ben could be Dean's son, but it was still possible that he wasn't. And where did she get the blood sample from Dean and this alleged other guy for comparison to Ben? Since Ben's arrival was an accident, was she in the habit of taking vials of blood from her paramours whilst they slept on the off chance she might need to check them at some point? And as I mention above, if she and her lovers happened to have the same blood type, such a test is unreliable.

What made it so surprising was that the episode was written by Sera Gamble, one of the show's best writers, who as a woman in a very male-dominated industry has surely experienced more than her fair share of outright sexism and patronising dinosaur attitudes to women. Obviously she didn't have a great deal of time, but something other than the cliché knocked-up-in-a-one-night-stand would have been nice. I wanted the character to be more than one-dimensional and have some depth to her, and not to be a sexually foolish and irresponsible woman, which is why I did that bit of tweaking.


	29. Chapter 29

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 29**

"Where'd it go?!" cried Jerry, his head trying to jerk around in so many different directions at once it was a wonder he didn't snap his neck.

And if not, Sam was already more than ready to do it for him as he also scanned the night sky for the disappeared Faerie – _absolute, complete, moronic __**idiot**_** –**

"Let me guess, the Faerie can materialise and dematerialise anywhere at _will_?!" Dean snapped the question towards Joe.

"Yup." Joe conceded, appearing phlegmatically unconcerned as he carefully scanned their surroundings.

"And you didn't think that worth _mentioning_?" Dean was not happy.

"Well, it wouldn'ta been a _problem_," drawled Joe, with a significant glance at the fidget-footed villain of the piece.

"Get down!" Sam yelled as he saw a flicker out of his peripheral vision and instinctively ducked.

A crackling, glowing white ball the size of a watermelon whisked over their heads to impact with a black scorch-mark against the hotel wall, accompanied by a high-pitched cackle of homicidal laughter.

"And she can throw white-hot fireballs out of thin air, too!" Dean yelped irately.

"Yup."

Automatically, the three hunters backed away from their proximity to each other; that way they made individual targets not one nice group shot. But all three men were tense, aware of the greater danger of their own shotguns – the Faerie could de/materialise at will in any spot, which meant if they weren't very careful they could end up taking a shot at the Faerie only for her to pull a beam-me-up-Scotty and end up shooting one another instead.

Before either brother could shout a warning, the Faerie appeared twenty yards behind Joe and unleashed another fireball, but having been standing there with his eyes bizarrely almost half-closed as if he were dozing, Joe displayed an impressively sprightly duck and roll manoeuvre which hinted at why he had no trouble acquiring and keeping – and keeping satisfied – a 'lady friend' despite being a mid-septuagenarian.

Sam and Dean exchanged an impressed glance; for all their 'we hope/we know we'll die before we get old' attitudes, it was clear that Joe's longevity had a lot more to do with skill and intellect and being a savvy hunter than could be accounted for by just being fortunate enough to experience 'good luck'. It was a point worth considering –

This time even Uriel dodged aside as a fireball shot across the hood of the Impala like a cannonball across the bows of an enemy ship; Sam was tempted to accidentally-on-purpose 'loose off a shot' in Uriel's proximity, but the Faerie was just so damned _fast_. She flickered in and out randomly, like when you were a kid and you used the glass of your wristwatch to see how fast you could reflect rays of sunlight around a room in random, speeding patterns.

Abruptly Sam's stomach flipped over horribly as an unexpected sound pierced the anxious silence; an outraged wail, accompanied by Dean's hipster on the back seat apparently moving of its own accord, as the angel-girl objected to the loud detonations and to waking up alone in a strange place _sans _mommy and daddy.

He risked whirling and firing off a barrel of his shotgun pre-emptively but it went wide as the Faerie re-materialised and hurtled a fireball straight at the Impala's back-door side window with an evil howl of glee –

And Dean's hipster and the little girl swaddled in it also suddenly vanished as Castiel made a slight sideways flick of his head – presumably transporting her into what was now the greater safety of inside the hotel.

And only a second before the side window of Dean's baby imploded in a lethal spray of shattered glass that would have skewered anyone in the car. "Bitch!" he yelled furiously but only the echo of manic laughter remained where she'd been. "We gotta end this now!"

"No kidding!" barked back Sam, not having Dean's Impala's welfare as his priority right now – or much of any time; the longer this went on, the more likely it was that it would end in a Faerie One Dead Hunter and Good Guys Nil score – and no way could they allow her to still be around at dawn so she could deep fry the poor bewildered suckers inevitably stumbling out of the hotel trying to work out what on earth had happened and what in hell the punch had been spiked with –

"Down!" barked Joe as she appeared again near the tree line and another fireball came straight at them; they scattered, even Uriel taking the sensible route of skipping a few steps away from the Impala that she seemed hell-bent on obliterating panel by panel.

"_What do you __**think **__you're __**doing**__?!_" Dean yelled irately even as he ducked and covered, as Castiel merely half-twisted his body away and raised one trench-coat-clad arm to shield his face as if trying to peer around some dazzling object.

"My orders are to follow your orders," called back Castiel, "and you said to stand here and _don't move_…!"

Instinct reacted faster than intellect – Dean lunged forward, gripping the lapel of Castiel's coat, using his bodyweight to yank Castiel _down_ into a smaller target, hunching protectively and turning his back towards the danger, even as he heard that psychotic cackle that warned the Faerie knew she had a sitting duck – or grounded angel – for target practice, and twisted his head to see her fling out her palms glowing with not one but two fireballs straight at him –

"_ENOUGH!"_

- that skimmed his hair and blasted the driver's window to smithereens as the Faerie suddenly pin-wheeled wildly through the air to hit the trunk of a massive oak with a sickening _CRUNCH_.

For a moment she seemed embedded in the trunk, then slid down to the base, lying in a crumpled heap, her eyes staring directly at them but unseeing, and most definitely dead.

Continued in Chapter 30…

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	30. Chapter 30

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 30**

"_Ee-nuff!_" Sam repeated the word with less volume but more vehemence and let his hand do the talking; Jerry, curled in on himself whimpering throughout the Faerie's fireball-firing version of Dodgeball, squealed as suddenly he was upright – and levitating a good three feet off the ground – but his squeals turned to croaks as Sam flexed his fingers slightly and Jerry's windpipe obligingly began to constrict.

Sam couldn't care less – he had had it up to his eyebrows with this putz! "_DEAN?!_ Are you okay?" he called towards the two huddled figures covered in shattered and partially melted glass. "_Dean! _Are you _hurt?!_"

"NO!" Dean yelped frantically, ignoring the dozen places where tiny shards of glass were pricking his skin, his whole attention focussed on Sam's coldly furious visage and choking, panicking, levitating Jerry – he'd seen that icy, pitiless rage on his father's face too many times not to know how dangerous it had made Dad, and now Sam - Diff' was, John Winchester hadn't had super-duper mind powers bequeathed by Dark Side demon blood; when it came to being able to 'act out' your toddler temper tantrum, Dad had been a seven-stone weakling, but Sam was Arnie Schwarzneggar. Dean was hyper-aware of Uriel, rising to his feet and watching the drama with both eyebrows raised and a smug _told-ya-so_ smirk seemed to be hovering around the edges of his face – if Sam seemed to threaten Castiel, what would Uriel do?

"Castiel? Are you alright?" Sam snapped. "Castiel…_are you injured?!_"

Slowly standing upright, and holding his left arm to his side at the elbow, Castiel returned Dean's beseeching look helplessly, because one snippet he had never explained to the Winchesters was that Angels Could Not Lie – obfuscate, yes; omit certain details, frequently; imply, definitely; choose their words with exquisite care to give an impression that might be absolutely, but not completely, truthful, indeed; but no angel could utter a direct lie, because Satan was the Father of The Lie, the Devil had Uttered the First Lie, and by it brought about Original Sin, which caused the Fall of Man*.

"_Castiel!_"

"I am…not permanently harmed."

To even his own surprise, Sam gave a soft snorting chuckle at the blatant sophistry. Did Castiel think Sam couldn't _see _how he was holding his – or rather the host's arm? Broken bone for sure. And did they really think he'd missed that look that had passed between Dean and Castiel?

"_Shut _up!" Sam snarled at Jerry, who promptly did so either out of sensibleness or 'terror-overload'. He demanded of Castiel, "You must be able to fix him?!"

"'Fix' him?" Castiel repeated cautiously, not wanting to provoke the younger Winchester any further as he was quite clearly at the end of his tether – and quite frankly, Castiel could relate.

But that was a problem he would have to deal with later – and it was a problem, for as one human amongst so many interchangeable others, Dean Winchester should not be causing Castiel to feel anything, never mind an increasing, and increasingly problematic, sense of respect, admiration and general liking.

"All night we have listened to _nothing _but justifications, and excuses, and reasons why whatever has happened has always somehow been everybody and anybody _else's_ fault but _his_, and I am sick of it. Can't you make him incapable of lying or _something_?" Sam appealed to the angel in exasperation, unaware of Castiel's brief internal self-lecture.

Castiel blinked rapidly at this notion and then abruptly bowed his head, half-closing his eyes, his lips quivering slightly as if he were sub-vocalising.

After only a couple of seconds he lifted up his head again, but this time with his eyes wide and his expression half-awed, half-fearful, but Sam waited respectfully, for it was the first remotely devout, or reverent or humble action he had ever seen either angel make.

"It is done." Castiel spoke quietly, but his words seem to ring somehow in the air like a declamation, a tolling bell.

"What's done?" Dean demanded, beating Sam to it by a microsecond.

Castiel looked at Jerry, who managed to appear more afraid of him than of Sam. "From this moment forward, Jerry Marcynuk has been Blessed with the Gift of Truth. No word of a lie, no dishonest statement, will ever pass his lips from now until he dies. His veracity will become legend, his pathological honesty proverbial."

A wide grin swallowed Dean's face. "Kid, you are officially _never _going to get laid!"

"Really?" Sam didn't quite know what to do; his demand of Castiel having been made on the spur of the moment to distract himself from his almost overwhelming urge to send Jerry, literally, the same way as the Faerie - flying through the air with the greatest of ease, right until flesh hit wood and the favourite won. "I mean…when he tries to lie to his parents he'll tell them the truth instead? He'll admit to his older brother what a skanky brat he really is?" Sam doubted it as he put forward the biggie, "He'll actually tell women he really doesn't care about them and that he's just a horndog wanting to get some?"

"Yes, yes and yes," Uriel rumbled, suddenly. "Unlike a Curse – which is a malediction and can somehow, some way, always be broken, he has been given a Divine Gift – and only the Giver of that gift can take it from him. He will never lie, or deceive, or say what is untrue, ever again."

"Okay, fine." unceremoniously plonking Jerry back on _terra firma_, ignoring the kid as he did a prime guppy fish impression, opening and closing his mouth speechlessly, Sam glared at his brother and the angels. "There, see? Not a scratch on him. And I hope we're all noting here how I used my powers to _save your_ asses _and _that I was only able to do that _because _of _Ruby_'s training…"

"Sam…" Dean began in irritation; he didn't need his face rubbed in it!

Sam rolled on like a juggernaut, "So, I'm going to take your apologies as read and I'm just going to have a minute's time–out here to _gloat_ on behalf of Ruby since she isn't here to graciously…okay, _ungraciously_…accept your contrition!"

Continued in Chapter 31…

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

**Author's Note** – for the information of non-religious readers:

Some religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, and others, believe that human beings were originally created by 'God' to be physically eternal, that is, that human beings' original life-span was, essentially, 'perpetual' or forever ongoing, but that the reason humans age and die is because we committed the Original Sin, caused by Satan the Devil (a.k.a. Lucifer) telling the first _deliberate _lie.

Over centuries, some religious faiths, notably Catholicism, came to claim that Original Sin was the sexual act, but this is not the case, as God had just blessed Adam & Eve's sexual union, so punishment for obedience would have been not just illogical but insane. The Bible actually states that the Original Sin was an act of Rebellion against God's Authority. (Namely, God had the right to insist on certain requirements, which humans refused to obey).

In the Bible, God allowed Adam and Eve to eat everything in the Garden of Eden, except for one tree, which he warned would cause their deaths in the 'same day' they ate from it. For a time, they had no trouble obeying this command and everything was fine. However, one day, Eve, on her own, was accosted by the bizarre phenomenon of a talking snake. Her wonder wouldn't have lasted long – she and Adam were used to the presence of angels in the garden and she would quickly have realised that, for some reason, an angel had chosen to speak to her in this way – although, alarm bells should have been ringing at an angel choosing to hide its identity, which clearly didn't happen.

Well aware that Eve did not have a complete knowledge of the facts and was therefore the more vulnerable of the two, Satan* engages Eve in conversation, and eventually tells her a direct lie: You will _not _die by disobeying God's command and eating the forbidden fruit. Eve initially does nothing, but nor does she tell Adam about the encounter, for the snake has appealed to her vanity, 'you too can be like god' (essentially, you can be a goddess). Eventually, when on her own again a few days later, she eats a fruit, and of course, nothing happens. Probably a day later, she plucks up courage to tell Adam what she has done, and points out that she has suffered no ill effects. Adam eats the fruit as well, and both are expelled from the garden as punishment – this is the Fall of Man from a state of divine Grace, or perfection – like a baking tin with a dent it in, all humanity descended from them will be born sinful, and therefore die. In the Bible, it states that to God, 'one thousand years is the same as one day'. Adam was 930 years old when he died, but from God's standpoint, with a day = 1,000 years, Adam (and Eve) had indeed died on the 'same day' as they'd eaten the fruit.

The reason Adam, not Eve, is blamed for mankind's Fall is because Adam was older and knew the score; he clearly failed to explain things fully to Eve, which left her dangerously vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation, which is exactly what happened. Adam allowed himself to be ruled by his gonads rather than taking a firm stance and sorting things out so that Eve understood the situation and could be excused her mistake. Because Satan's deliberate lie caused the fall of man, lies are wicked – not unintentional untruths, but deliberate lies told to harm, or deceive others, or to suit our convenience or to disguise things we know we have done wrong but don't want to face up to.

Actually, although the idea is now out of fashion at the moment again, there has in the past been scientific speculation that the notion of human immortality as stated in Genesis has sound basis in fact, and that the incredible life-spans mentioned in Genesis, prior to the "great flood of Noah" were based on reality. Scientists discovered that from the moment of conception, the human body is always replacing and replenishing worn-out cells. Every cell of your body is gradually replaced by a new one, in a cycle that takes about seven years to fully complete. Some scientists believe that this process of regeneration is supposed to work like an autonomic reflex function – like breathing, which we do automatically, or like digesting food – we have no control over it once we swallow the food, but our bodies just sort it out for us, like we also don't have to keep telling ourselves to breath every second.

But for some reason, the system has stopped working; instead of just regenerating as we should perpetually, when a person reaches full biological human maturity – psychological, physical and sexual adulthood – at about the age of 30-35 years, the system begins to fail – the 7-year cycle becomes 10 years, then 12, and so on, worn-out cells take longer to be replaced and the new ones are shorter-lived, less efficient and so on. The reason we have grey hair, wrinkles – the reason we have old age and death at all – is because this regeneration cycle should in theory keep going on and on and on like the Energizer Bunny, but doesn't. Scientists have been trying for many years to find the cause of the flaw in our genes, and fix it – the one that does so will have made humans immortal – or maybe immortal again. Some researchers point out that from an evolutionary viewpoint, it is very dangerous for a species to have to take half its lifespan of about 70 years to reach full adult maturity, as that species is far more likely to become extinct. The fact that humans take so long (30-35 years) indicates that once, statistically, our natural life-span was at least three times greater than it is now. In the Bible, it states that the Earth had a 'water canopy' in the atmosphere which was destroyed in the Great Flood, and that after that happened, human life-spans plummeted within two generations from an average of 700 years to about 80 years, indicating something caused a great deal of genetic damage.

* The name Lucifer, or 'light-bearer' does not appear in the bible as any creature's individual name, and was derived about 300 years after the death of Christ when the bible was translated into Latin by "Saint Jerome", originally from a verse where the Apostle Paul describes the Devil as deceitfully 'transforming himself into an 'angel of light' (good) to mislead people; in Latin translations, the word 'angel of light' in that verse translates as_ lucis _[light] and_ ferre_[to bear or bring] = _lucifer_.

The bible was originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek with a smattering of odd words in Egyptian, Persian and Assyrian. The phrase translated 'lucifer' in the Latin language has several literal and other symbolic meanings in the bible, depending on the context. In Isaiah, written in Hebrew, where Satan is called 'you shining one', the word is helel or heleyl and becomes Lucifer in Latin; in Revelation, Jesus is referred to as the 'day star' or 'bright morning star' of spiritual hope for humanity, which again is Lucifer in Latin but in the Greek written by the Apostle John was heliosphoros. The day-star literally was the planet Venus, which in that part of the world often could be seen apparently shining brightly shortly before dawn; the planet Venus or day-star was used across myriad ancient cultures in a metaphoric way, and could be 'generalised' – in the book of Job, words translated as 'lucifer' actually refers to constellations of stars like Ursa Major (the great bear) Orion (the hunter) and the Pleiades. However, Lucifer was further linked as Satan's name because verses in Ezekiel Chapter 28 mention Satan's original jewel-like radiance and wisdom and beauty as a cherub in Eden before he became evil; in Revelation, Satan falls like "lightning" from the sky, also reinforcing the Latin translation of Lucifer as a name, rather than, as with Satan and Devil, descriptions of what he is, not his name. (The words mean slanderer, deceiver, murderer, because Satan a) slandered God to Eve, b) deceived Eve as to the truth, and c) murdered all of humanity by inducing Eve then Adam to effectively commit suicide by disobedience).


	31. Chapter 31

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 31**

_And not even the angels noticed how the Faerie corpse's eyes impossibly blinked once at the scene before it, as if the body were momentarily being used as some sort of mystical 'webcam'…_

Continued in Chapter 32…

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	32. Chapter 32

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 32**

"You may have the right of it. I admit we…_could_…have misjudged the demoness." Uriel conceded.

There was a tiny pause; Dean was dimly aware that both he and Sam had identical expressions like that of a stunned goldfish – big eyes and silently opening/closing mouths. Even Castiel was staring at his fellow angel with a look that could only be described as, _I saw his lips move, but I __**still **__don't believe he just said those words_.

"_You _do?"

Sam's tone was pure astonished disbelief; some quality in his tone clued Dean in that his brother was half-wishing he had a bottle of Holy Water to splash over the guy; Castiel was clearly also wishing the same thing. Dean had an overwhelming urge to stage-whisper 'you keep him talking, _I'll _look for the pod'.

"'By their works you will know them, and they will make manifest what they are,'" Uriel's deep yet mellifluous voice had an almost musical cadence as he obviously 'quoted', presumably some Bible verse. "Ruby has consistently aided you, and remained allied to you, despite insults, and been your vanguard when _we _were unable to intervene; these things cannot be gainsaid. Besides, the centuries have already proven her capacity for loyalty-"

"How d'you mean?" Dean asked, confused, and, unlike – apparently – Uriel, not _quite _so ready to embrace the epiphany and be instantly converted to the Ruby Fan Club; Ruby, after all, had seduced his baby brother and led him along the road of muscle-bulking his mental powers, _not _the other way around.

"The damned dead become demons as the pit burns away their humanity, they forget what it is to feel and to have conscience." Uriel replied. "In life, Ruby became a witch and was wicked – and yet, and yet… is it not written in the Superlative Song… 'love is as strong as death is, exclusive devotion as unyielding as the grave is, love is the blazing of fire, the flame of God…'"

Love poetry…from _Uriel?!_ Dean had to be hallucinating he decided, as Uriel seemed oblivious to their stupefied looks and he had carried on talking.

"…Despite the centuries Ruby's loyalty to her lover was such that even though only the memory of her love for him remained, it was sufficient to sustain some remnant of humanity within her, to ensure that she retained enough of what it was to be human to motivate her to help you out of a hole not just once, but to throw her lot in with you entire…"

"Very…_magnanimous_…" Dean put in hastily, baffled as Sam's face unaccountably darkened. "Especially of _you_."

Uriel's huge biceps bulged as he shrugged with his arms folded across his equally muscular chest, "It has been necessary to…_adjust_. It has been two millennia since we and our brethren walked the Earth…in those days, the world was a greatly simpler place, and the choices faced by the mu- your kind, were far more easily defined. Good – and Evil - was much more obvious and clear cut than this world in which you and your brother live."

"I reckon Right and Wrong're still pretty immutable," Joe, who had been listening in silence to these exchanges while keeping an eye on Jerry Marcynuk (apparently and happily stunned into traumatised silence), put in his opinion.

"That is true," Castiel finally commented after a moment when it became clear Uriel had said all he could be bothered to say and the 'share and care' moment was Officially Over, "but the societies and cultures people live in today…like Truth, surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies…Right and Wrong, Good and Evil…the line has become much finer, the world much more shades of grey than black or white…the demarcation between what is dubious but – just – acceptable and that which is beyond dubious and stepping over the line into Wrong is all too often a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact."

"Ain't that the truth," conceded Joe.

"Very nice of you, but the sky's getting lighter, and _we _still have to do what precious little damage control we can on this mess."

Dean winced as Sam snarked his initial words at Uriel, again baffled as he recognised the underlying tone in Sam's voice as indicating his brother was upset and angry about something, so he quickly put in to distract and divert, "Yeah, our late and unlamented Tinkerbell only reversed the enchantment from _sunrise_, which means that we'll have about two hundred people go from monstrous to hysterical in ten seconds flat. Joy."

"Yeah, I'll never complain about Elvis again," Sam assured him, "Hell, they got a tacky plastic bust of Hannibal Lector in the window – we're still pulling in, I promise."

"Damn skippy we are." Dean retorted, reminded anew that this whole nightmare night was only involving them because _Sam _was too la-dih-dah to spend the night in a motel not afraid to let their love for the King hang out.

"We can make it so that the people here suffer no trauma from what has happened." Castiel offered suddenly.

"What?"

"Hang on…_Now _you're Mr Step Up To The Plate? What brought this on?" Sam demanded.

"It is a momentary thing, and will contravene no rule of heaven," Castiel claimed.

_Yeah right, __**that's **__your motivation, I don't think_…Like Sam hadn't _seen _Castiel's eyes flick briefly towards Dean, that faintly hopeful glance, like a very young child bashfully offering some small gift – battered bluebells or a crayon drawing – to a parent and obviously hoping for approval and acceptance? Sam recognised it instantly in any form, because he'd spent most of his life being _that _kid doing things to get _that _response, not from Dad, but from his adored big brother. And Castiel's brainpower more than made up for two millennia of being out of the loop by not mixing with the Great Unwashed down here on Planet Dirt; a half-hour's discerning observation would have clued him in that a lifetime of indoctrination had hard-wired Dean to respond with protectiveness, comfort, and affection to the Soulful-Gaze and Hopeful Waif and Little Boy Lost genre of wide-eyed looks and timidly hopeful expressions.

Which meant… had Castiel being 'trapped immobile' next to the car been a _ruse_ designed to engage Dean's protective 'big brother' emotional response in Castiel's favour?

First, develop your theory; then test it. "It's not like you're being _altruistic_ here though is it," Sam challenged. "Dean could just _order _you to take away their trauma, since your orders are to follow his orders. In fact, he could order you to kill Lill-"

"That would be true, but those orders are no longer in force."

_And isn't that convenient_. Sam didn't say it because he didn't need to; both Joe and Dean's faces showed they were in synchronicity on this one.

Momentarily Dean thought he saw the Faerie blink, but ignored the optical illusion and focussed on Castiel's admission. "Hold it. In the less than…" he checked his watch, "five fun-filled minutes since _I_ saved _your _angelic ass from being deep-fried-to-go by Little Miss Psychotic 2009, we've gone from me having an angel of the lord as my personal bagman to me being told, 'not our problem, deal with it yourself, jack'? That's just _cold_…where's all the love from above?"

Uriel smirked in a familiar and vastly annoying way, "Those orders were given forth from the beginning with the proviso that they would be null and void in the instant that you learned of their continuance beyond the immediate situation of attempting to prevent the breaking of the Seal of Samhain."

"Makes sense." Joe nodded sagely.

Both Sam and Dean turned to gape at him. "Dude, in _what _universe?" snapped Dean.

"Boys, we're hunters. We _protect, _that's what we do." Joe didn't appear concerned by their joint ire, "but because of that we tend to follow our hearts, not our heads. And, to out-quote Uriel here, the Good Book warns that 'the heart is treacherous,' and our heart is what causes each of us to be 'drawn out and enticed by our own desire, which when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin, and when sin has been accomplished, it brings forth death'."

"So not needing a sermon!" barked Dean.

"So you wouldn't ever be enticed by a desire to order Castiel to go around the world smiting all the rapists or paedophiles?"

Dean paused in the act of drawing breath to rant and blinked rapidly. "I could have done that? Are you kidding? Who'd need to be _enticed_?"

"Dean could have saved millions of women and children from horrible suffering, and that's a bad thing?!" Sam was fully on board for this one; one of Jess's closest friends had somehow fought off a rapist, at the cost of being in hospital for a month followed by a nervous breakdown and the collapse of her relationship with her boyfriend. "And you two – shut up!" he snarled as Castiel opened his mouth to speak.

"Of course not," Joe countered, "but the Good Book says the reason humans fell from Grace is because they _wanted _to believe Lucifer's claim that they knew better than God –"

"In short, tough, because _we did it to ourselves_ – very merciful and divinely loving, I don't think!" retorted Dean.

But Joe gave him a considering look, "If you tell a little one not to touch the stove because it's hot, and the baby does and burns his fingers, would he ever learn his lesson if you kept magically healing his fingers each time he did it so he felt no pain? So he knew you would _always _magically heal his fingers? The Good Lord doesn't _cause_ suffering, but He is _not_ going to magically keep stepping in and stopping the idiot committing slow suicide by scotch or cigarette, or the city officials of New Orleans pocketing taxpayers' money instead of keeping the levees in good shape, or various governments of Indonesia from being so corrupt that they divert funds into their own bank accounts rather than investing in early warning technology that detects tsunamis, or greedy companies cutting down rainforest on mountainsides that protected villages from massive mudslides. People make those choices, and people have to live with them. It's not nice, and it's not fair, and it's humanity's fault that the world is like that, not God's."

"What about Bobby Singer, Dean?" Castiel asked quietly. "If God allowed you to command an angel, what about all the other good and decent people in the world, like Bobby Singer, or Nelson Mandela, for instance. Why do you deserve to be able to give the Cherubim of God orders, and not Bobby, or Ellen Harvelle? Where and with whom should the line be drawn of 'you're good but not good enough'?"

"Wait a minute…" Sam backtracked, "I thought angels couldn't lie?"

"We cannot." Castiel confirmed.

"Then how come you got away with hiding this until now?" Sam pointed out angrily.

"We hid nothing," Castiel contradicted. "I admitted to Dean that our orders were to follow his orders. I simply did not explain that those orders were ongoing, for in the instant that I had, they would have been automatically rescinded. We are under no compulsion to reveal information that is nobody else's business."

_And you think that put-down's going to put me 'in my place', while you keep pulling that soulful puppy routine on Dean? Not in this or any other universe, Cassy; Dean's my brother and he's going to stay mine. _Sam allowed none of his feelings to show on his face, but before Dean could carry on the argument, Castiel took charge, speaking a little more firmly.

"Dawn is approaching, and our offer is what it is. You must gather all those in the hotel into the ballroom, and, at dawn, they will rise as if from sleep, with vague but pleasant memories of an enjoyable evening."

"We can do that." Dean conceded.

"Unfortunately you also must leave," Castiel told them. "We cannot adjust their memories and modify…Pete's…so that _h_e remembers interacting with you. It will be as if you never came to this hotel."

"Like we're eager to try and get any shut-eye in _Chez Barbie_." Sam muttered, wincing at the memory of all that pink…_pink_.

"Only you four will ever know what really happened." Castiel assured them.

As one, the three hunters looked at Jerry, who cringed – or rather, cringed more, apparently being completely cried, whimpered, whinged and whined out.

"He will speak of this to no-one," Castiel cast an indifferently inhuman or inhumane – or both –glance at the boy, saying with confidence, "after all, who would believe him, and he would simply end up in a mental hospital for his life."

"Works for me, I'll take it. Okay, you two – _please_, wait out here and we'll get your ducks in a row for you to work your heavenly whammy. Come on Sam."

"I'm still spry enough to help with the totin'" Joe offered.

"No problem," Dean, familiar with the liveliness of Bobby Singer, wasn't going to patronise Joe, especially considering that during his and Sam's little _tête-à-tête_ with the heavenly choir reps, Joe had taken the time to reload and was now fully 'loaded for bear' again. "Let's all move before they raise the parkin' rate."

Continued in Chapter 33…

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

**Author's Note: **Given that the angels are only now "walking among" humans for "the first time in 2000 years", I doubted that Uriel would be using modern LA speak like 'frenemy', 'nice tat'', 'mofo'', 'dingo ate my baby crazy'' and so forth. Nor is English the angels' first language – and American English is, linguistically, a newborn baby.

So I tried to go like Data [Brent Spiner] on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he couldn't use contractions like I'll instead of I will or we're instead of we are, and also throw in a few nice archaisms:

_Vanguard _is the rear of a large group of soldiers or traders. In ancient times when there was no motorised transport, armies and merchants (caravans) would travel in large numbers along certain routes; the back of the group was called the 'van' and those tasked with guarding the rear the 'vanguard'. Since the rear or van was where the baggage, supplies of food, water rations and ancillary personnel travelled (e.g., wives and children or official prostitutes) a Vanguard was the last hope of defence against someone wanting to steal/destroy the troops' spare weaponry or their water, or the merchants' trading goods, etc. If Dean and Sam are the 'vanguard' against Lucifer, they are the last line of defence between him and the world.

_Gainsaid _means 'refuted' or 'argued against' – 'that the sun rises in the East cannot be gainsaid' is something cannot be refused; it is an unarguable fact/point that the sun does indeed appear to "rise" in the East.

_Brethren _(literally brothers) means relatives or kin, but it is most often used in a religious/cultural sense to denote those who are 'family' or 'relatives' in the sense of sharing a common faith, or a common culture, e.g., the Plymouth Brethren.

Uriel as an angel would also quote scripture; the Superlative Song is the Song of Solomon, Chapter 8:6, the treacherous heart is from Jeremiah 17: 9, 10 and enticed by desire is James 1:14,15. Various Bible translations use slightly different word orders for each verse, so I have amalgamated these into the easiest to understand.


	33. Chapter 33

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 33**

The three men stopped inside the lobby; in front of them, slumped out cold on the floor, was a large monster movie 'wolfman'. Nearby was a couch; a tiny little girl lay sleeping peacefully on it, covered by Dean's leather hipster. He went over to her and gently picked it up and put it back on, glancing over at Sam as they both took in the absolute silence. Together, they moved past the front desk to the downstairs double doors into the ballroom, Joe on their heels, and stuck their heads inside.

Everyone was there, and everyone was unconscious, or at least in a very deep sleep, presumably courtesy of Castiel. Sam and Joe got Wolfman by the ankles and hauled him inside, whilst Dean carried in angel baby; unceremoniously he pushed a pirate off a chair and curled her up on the plush, wide seat before following the other two out to the lobby.

"I'll bring Pete down if you two take of the lion and the witch," offered Sam.

"Who's gonna take care o' the wardrobe?" quipped Joe.

"What wardrobe?"

"Niv'r mind," grunted Joe and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like a Bobby-style 'eedjits' under his breath as Sam walked over and used the barrel of his shotgun to press the 'call' button for the elevator.

Joe followed as Dean went up the staircase from the lobby to the first floor; looking at the door behind which a big-ass lion was hopefully as out of it as everyone else seemed to be and remembering the gunged-up lock, Dean suggested, "Pro'lly be easiest to get the Witch first."

"Sure," Joe agreed and they carried on along the corridor. "So…this Ruby…is a demon?"

_In spades - _"Yeah."

There was a long pause, which Dean fervently hoped would be permanent as – _Yahtzee, _here was Miss Green Green Grass of Home, crumpled against the wall where they'd left her -

"And she and your brother are…"

- and ixnay the Yahtzee.

"Yeah." Dean hoped the word would suffice as he rolled Witch over and got a grip on her ankles, with a significant look at Joe to get her arms.

Joe obliged and they began to cart her back along the corridor; Dean knew he was being hoist by his own petard right now – he was a breast man all the way – he loved those plump, sweet globes that he could taste and fondle to drive a woman wild with delight, but he liked a woman with ripe curves too, soft, warm flesh that a man could sink into, or sink his teeth into, that he could hold and squeeze lusciously – he'd had a one-night – hell, a one-hour threesome hook-up with an and up-and-coming model (she'd been both by the time he'd finished with her) and her cousin who had inadvertently walked in on them, and it had been like falling onto a clothing rack – all thin pole and sharp, poky coat-hangers. The cousin had just arrived from small-town Wisconsin and had been a corn-fed buxom brunette whose inexperienced enthusiasm had been matched by her being a _real _quick study – her he'd have happily kept naked and sated all weekend. Trouble was, Miss Witch was Dean's kinda gal, and that meant she _wasn't _a lightweight – she was a Double-D cup for sure, and these shapely, voluptuous thighs with plenty for a man to hold onto when he rode -

"And…those two…Castiel and Uriel - are _literally_ helping you from the, uh, 'side of the _angels_'?" Joe questioned as they negotiated round a corner so as not to whack the poor girl's head against the wall – at least not any more than it already had been already this night.

Again – "Yeah."

"_AhopetherestofemrsmarternUriel."_

It took a moment for Dean's brain to decipher the words into 'Ah hope the rest of 'em 'r' smarter'n Uriel' as he realised he hadn't been intended to hear the _sotto voce _mumble – but look where ignoring unpleasant conversations had got him with Sam, so he demanded bluntly and more sharply than he intended, "Wha'd'yuh mean?"

Joe just managed to stop himself from giving a shrug that would have bounced poor greengage gal's head off the carpet hard. "Didn't you see Sam's face go thundercloud after Uriel's little pep-talk?"

"I guess…" These days Dean found he had no sympathy for Sam's moods and evasions and pulling their father's need-to-know crap.

"And…?"

"And what?" Dean was exasperated and this chick was getting heavier by the second. They had to be near the lobby now, surely?

Joe raised his eyebrows, seemingly unaffected by the weight of the unconscious girl. "Look, my love life has been active since before you were born – since before your daddy was born –"

"And we're having this TMI moment because that's relevant _how_?"

"Because, even though I _know _I'm a hypocrite, I still want me to be my lady friend's _only _friend. Given that your brother is…obviously a mite stressed out these days, do you really think it was a _good_ idea for Uriel to clue him in on the fact that the only reason his 'demon lover' retains enough humanity to willingly _help_ the pair of you is because she still remembers what it was like _to be in love with another man_?"

Oh.

"She told Sam…" Dean admitted after a moment. "That night she – they first – " _stop blithering Dean, he's known about the birds and bees since before you were born. Before even mom and dad were born._ "The night that Sam first had her…she was trying to comfort him over…" _the fact that I was in Hell and stuck there_, "his grief at the time and he told me she said, '_I still remember what it's like to lose someone_…' I guess…I just never took that on board until now."

"And you can bet that neither did _Sam_," Joe pointed out quietly. "Nowadays most hunters'd get slapped with the 'misogynistic dinosaur' label faster'n you could spit. But we're not sexist in the _normal _sense. Most hunters view their womenfolk as beings of beauty and brightness to be cherished and fiercely protected from anything that would force them to sully themselves down here in the filth and dirt we have to scrabble in. Personally, I think that's kind of a _respectful_ ideology, but unfortunately it tends to make us hunter men a bit 'unreconstructed' and well, primal, in our responses."

"I get that." Dean winced, acknowledging that primitive was sometimes his MO; there had been times, particularly back when he'd been hunting alone, before Dad had disappeared and he'd fetched Sam from Stanford, when he'd finished a hunt shaking with lust and he'd had to avoid all contact with the fairer sex for a few days until he could trust himself to be moderately civilised in the sack and not outdo an incubus in brutal, rutting animalistic lust.

"I guess y'all can't blame Uriel for obviously being a little out of practice in the trying-to-help department," Joe conceded, "but _how_ do you think your brother is going to cope now he's been clued in to exactly what is enabling Ruby to overcome her demonic nature and fight with you not against you?"

_Badly_. Dean already knew Sam's jealous nature – even with Ben, there had been a hint of pique in Sam's attitude after he'd taken one look at the kid realised how likely it was that the kid was Dean's son, therefore a rival to the pre-eminent place Sam held in Dean's life.

As if reading Dean's mind, Joe told him, "Right now the fact that Ruby's a demon is _irrelevant_ because she has the same problem as a human woman would in this situation – she _can't _prove a _negative_. She can't _prove _to Sam that she does have genuine feelings for _him_ and she's not thinking of her dead love when she's with him. He –"

"Has to take her assurance on faith…and demons _lie_." Dean finished ruefully. "But…Ruby isn't – I'm sure of it…at least, not about this."

"I don't know her, I'll accept your judgement," Joe again aborted a shrug as they manoeuvred the unconscious witch. "But…is there someone, _special_, who you would get back to if you could? Someone who, y'know, sets that inner orchestra off on a full-blown symphony riff?"

_Lisa_ – her image was there in his head instantly, her sombre brown eyes unflinching as she looked him in the face and lied to him, for him, so he could carry on helping people, because she really was kind and brave and a lot brighter than him.

"And could you be as level-headed and sensible about this if we were talking about _you_ and your…Lisa?" Joe drawled, making Dean flinch as realised he must have spoken her name aloud, "Instead of about Sam and Ruby? Pardon my crudity here…but if you were with Lisa, inside her…but when her eyes fluttered closed with ecstasy and her head fell back with bliss - but when she moaned as you filled her and her legs wrapped round you and she pumped her hips to meet every thrust of you – but if you _knew _there was a possibility she was seeing _him _behind her eyes, thinking of _him, _wanting it to be _him_ riding her, claiming her, _him _hard and throbbing inside her–"

_Stop. _But he couldn't even frame the word as his mind went up in flames at the image of some faceless man entwined with Lisa, making her cry out in ecstasy for _him_.

By some psychic osmosis, Joe heard it anyway. "Like I said, excuse my crudeness about a lady. But when Sam went off at Jerry Marcynuk earlier about family – with your Dad, John, and you yourself, Sam has spent his whole life smacking up against a rival for your love he could never defeat – your grief for a mother he's got no concept of and no ability to love in any real sense, because she was turned from a real but flawed person into unassailable perfection in you and your Dad's memories due to her murder by that yellow-eyed bastard Azazel. Now yet again Sam has a rival for Ruby, the ghost of a man he might not be able to exorcise, a rival made a perfect paragon by doing nothing but dying years back –"

"Centuries." Dean corrected, consciously loosening his grip on this poor girl's ankles, remembering Ruby's quip about being a human woman 'back when the plague was big' – in the Americas, that had been the 1500-1600s, so three-fifty, four hundred years minimum?

"Which makes it even worse," drawled Joe, looking grim. "If _we _can realise how extraordinary and special he must have been to Ruby for the memory of him to sustain some humanity in her for several hundred years, then do you doubt that _Sam_ will _also_ realise it if he hasn't already?"

"And Ruby can't prove otherwise – to either of us." Dean acknowledged what Joe had instantly grasped even as Uriel was making his well-intentioned but unwise sort-of-apology.

"In their proper context and right proportions, jealousy and suspicions are useful, beneficial, even positive emotions." Joe told him. "Jealousy assures the person we love that we are not indifferent, that we do _care_ about them. Likewise a prudent suspicion keeps us from being taken for mugs and shaken down till our teeth rattle. _But_ they spread so easily and so fast – they're like dandelion weeds in your back yard – you can yank 'em up as soon as you see 'em and make a nice medicine with them, but let them get the upper hand and spread uncontrolled all over and you have a ruined yard."

"So what would you suggest I do?" Dean half-snapped, half-pleaded, goaded by the sage wisdom of Joe's words.

"I don't know…but what I do know is that inappropriate jealousy and misguided suspicions lead to dark thoughts and darker deeds. If this Ruby really is the most _reliable _ally you've got, can you _afford _for Sam to _alienate_ her by acting like a jerk over his suspicions and jealousy?"

Finally arriving at the top of the lobby staircase enabled Dean to avoid answering as they concentrated on getting her down the stairs without bashing her head and her butt on every step, but the small reprieve didn't really mean much as he had no doubt that Joe was perfectly well aware that the answer to his own question was 'No'.

_Continued in Chapter 34…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	34. Chapter 34

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 34**

Dean let the ballroom doors swing shut behind him coming back into the lobby, his back muscles expressing their relief that the Wicked Witch was safely deposited in the ballroom. He wouldn't have minded her being wicked when she was awake, but unconscious she had inflicted wicked pain on his back. Speaking of _pain_, getting into Room Eleven was gonna be –

"Hang on, we need some solvent…" he told Joe going behind the front desk and beginning to root through the drawers and shelving.

"Uh huh." Fortunately Joe seemed to take this slightly bizarre requirement in his stride.

Dean, however, found himself uncomfortable in the sudden absence of conversation, uncomfortable though it had been; he and Sam had hardly acquitted themselves with style and class tonight, and their constant antagonism must have made Joe reckon he'd fallen into one of those hysterically overwrought Eighties miniseries full of dysfunctional families scheming to do each other down – _Kane and Abel_, _East of Eden_, or something.

Given that their mom had been named after Joe's dead sister, and how unlikely it was that Mary Briddon Campbell had died peacefully in bed surrounded by sorrowing loved ones like an episode of _Highway to Heaven_ or _Touched By An Angel_ where the tears were all genteel and slipped gracefully down pale cheeks as opposed to the reality where tears spurted and streaked and your eyes puffed up like Japanese blowfish either side a nose dripping snot and your cheeks went all scarlet and mottled and you looked a complete dick, given all _that_, Dean felt compelled to assure the guy he and Sam weren't _complete _douchebags.

"You aren't seeing me or Sam at our best," _and nowhere near it, _he admitted. "It's been – overwhelming really. Until last year we didn't even _know _any of this stuff about our family – then suddenly we have grandpa _Samuel _and grandma _Deanna_ demon hunters, and we have all this - this…"

"Heritage?" Joe suggested.

"Yeah, _heritage_." Dean repeated the word with approval. "I always used to look at all those Blue Chip Stock families, y'know, 'Cabot Wilmington the Fourth' who just expects to _inherit _a senator's seat, or those Brit Royals – Prince Charles – and people like Paris Hilton – and think, what douchebags…but when we found out about my grandparents…Samuel Campbell was hardcore all the way, and Deanna was no slouch –then it hit me how _hard _it is to have the _weight_ of all that expectation piled on you – your granddaddy was Aristotle Onassis or your Great-grandmother was Jackie Kennedy and everybody expects you to excel beyond and exceed past all that by the time you're in first grade. Whatever you do you've got some complete stranger deluded that he or she has a right to critique regardless of actually knowing jack about you or it being any of their business."

"You're not wrong," Joe told him, "Back when my Mary was sparkin' your Great-Uncle Ted, afore they got married, she broke it off once 'cause o' that."

"What…Jackie Kennedy?"

"Nope, _expectation_. Ted's mama – your great-grandmother – came from a hunter family way back; I didn't know her maiden surname but in fact, rumour had it that she could tell you about her kin all the way back to her 20-times-great-great whatever ancestress who was some major demon-ass-kicking priestess in the Temple of Amun back when the Pharaohs were big and the pyramids were just sketches on papyrus cocktail napkins." Joe described. "Agin that, the Briddons were tenderfoots by comparison – the family got into the life when Sam Colt – _the _Sam Colt – and a hunter buddy of his saved their butts from a wendigou back in the Winter of 1849 – apparently the other hunter was his best friend who he made this magical Colt revolver for – supposedly kills demons…"

There is no supposedly…

"But Mary felt she couldn't really live up to all that weight of history of being Ted Campbell's wife, 'specially since your grandpa Sam had just married Deanna _Colt_."

"But she changed her mind."

Joe gave an outright laugh. "She didn't have much choice. Let's just say that if you ever thought your _Daddy_ John was bull-headed, you never saw the Campbell brothers on a tear. Teddy redefined relentless; nothing stopped Sam getting Deanna, and nothing stopped Teddy getting Mary. Not that she was exactly beatin' him off with a stick anyways."

"It was just a lot to take in." _especially right in the middle of trying to escape from going to Hell and being hunted by that literal hell-bitch Lillith._ Finally, right at the back, a thick canary-yellow tube of KUM UNSTUCK, 'powerful all-purpose solvent'. "Last year – _Ruby_ – gave us a list of mom's family and friends…she was the one who clued us in to all our 'heritage'. Still can't work out whether I want to hit her or hug her for that, to be honest. Sam checked the list and we found out they'd all been killed – or rather conveniently died…indirectly that brought us into this whole current mess…"

"I'm not exactly covered in glory myself," Joe admitted as Dean held up his prize and came back around the desk. "Like I said, Teddy was my best friend as well as my brother-in-law, but when Mary was killed…I was grieving and me and my wife had a young family to care for…I just wasn't _there_ fore Teddy like I shoulda bin, even with the kids, like he deserved. And later on, after your mom was killed and your pop just dropped off the grid, so did everyone else – including Teddy. Over the years I'd found out one or two had died but given how often hunters have to change our identities, and how much we move about – state to state…country to country…hell, there's some regular _continent _hopping goin' on…Keeping straight who's who is nigh on impossible – Campbell may not even have been Teddy and Sam's real surname…it's like that serial killer, in Britain, that doctor?"

"Dr Chapman – no, Shipman – killed over two hundred old people?"

"Yeah, he got away with it for a decade or more because everyone _expects_ the elderly to die. Hunters…"

"The life ends bloody, or sad," Dean acknowledged, with a sudden sensation of deep weariness, "and usually sooner rather than later."

"Yep. Hunters die – often, sudden and usually violently. It wasn't until I found out that Teddy and Liz Colt both died within eighteen months of each other of heart failure that I figured somethin' rotten was going on – they both had the constitutions of bull elephants. Liz was your great-aunt, she was Deanna's sister. She married…"

"Elizabeth Wallace," memory triggered the name in Dean's mind. "She was on the list Ruby gave to Sam. Apparently a suburban housewife with a hobby of collecting _silverware _and _charms_, heart failure."

"My ass…" Joe's certainty rang in his derisory tone. "Azazel was out to get 'em all – he must have realised they knew something and just picked them off, one by one…"

"Maybe they _wanted _it to think that," Dean paused at the bottom of the staircase up to the next floor. "I mean, there's no way to know now…but Azazel admitted to Sam that it had lost track of us for years on end when my dad went underground. Maybe mom's friends, her family, knew they couldn't go head-to-head with Yellow Eyes and win so they helped the only way they could by buying my Dad time to regroup and come back stronger? Y'know, tie up the super-villain's resources and minions sorting out a series of minor irritations –"

"Divert and distract the bad guy over there, so he doesn't notice the dude sneaking up behind him over here?" Joe summarised the theory, looking thoughtful as he slowly followed Dean up the steps. "It's possible."

"And it _worked_," Dean pointed out quietly, wondering anew about that unknown group of people who could very well have knowingly sacrificed their lives in the hope it would give Mary's husband, or her sons, time to find a way to wreak their revenge on Azazel. "It took nearly twenty years for the thing to find Teddy Campbell, never mind the others. And in the end, _we killed Azazel_. Somehow, I doubt we'd have been the winners if Azazel had had twenty years of being able to give his undivided attention to Sam – to all the psychic kids."

"Sounds exactly like the kinda plan Teddy, or Liz – or any one of 'em – would come up with in a flat second," Joe told him. "They were hunters – whatever the cost, it was worth it to get what payback they could by leading Azazel around by the nose for as long as possible, and like you said, you and your brother killed Azazel."

_And look at how we're acting now_. Dean suppressed a wince as he carefully began to squeeze the solvent into the keyhole, which Sam had enthusiastically gunged up with glue – and, damn, still had the key for. He'd have to get his lock-pick set out.

"I know me and Sam haven't been at our best tonight," _Or since I got back from my literal vacation from Hell; talk about understatement. _"Unfortunately right now we're having some…" he would _not _use that politically correct idiot word 'issues', "personality clashes…"

Joe gave a wry chuckle, "You're _brothers_; hell that's what siblings do – me and Mary, me and our brother, we had some howling humdingers – harsh language, throwing of heavy crockery…"

"These are more ideological differences." _Like he's having sex with a demon and using evil to fight evil and I can't argue because I'm fairly sure Castiel and Uriel are leading me around by the nose and that the moral high ground they've led me to stand on to argue with Sam is gonna turn out to be quicksand any second now._

"Plenty o' them too." Joe acknowledged walking up the stairs and watching as Dean took the top off the tube and started squeezing it into the keyhole. "That's the thing about family and friends – five people can have five different opinions, and the hard part comes when every single one of them has got some _valid_ point that you can't argue with."

"It goes a bit deeper than that," Dean found it easier to have the conversation if he concentrated overmuch on squeezing the solvent into the keyhole to unglue it. "Sam's not _right_, but he's not entirely _wrong_, either and I'm in no position to cast the first stone becuase…a while back I did…I got involved in some…pretty bad stuff."

"And it's hard to live with…I've been there m'self."

_I seriously doubt it_. Dean realised a fraction of a second too late he'd actually said the words aloud.

_Continued in Chapter 35…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers


	35. Chapter 35

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 35**

"How 'bout I take a guess: you did something bad, or did some bad things, plural, and now what's twisting you up is not what you _did_, but that you _enjoyed _doing it."

Dean didn't move as some invisible fist punched him in the ribs and forced the air out of his lungs.

Fred Astaire fashion sense or not, Joe Briddon clearly had Bobby Singer's wisdom when it came to seeing right through Dean's bull. Or maybe it was a skill all old folks had, to effortlessly expose the crap of the young and belligerent.

"Yeah…" what else was there to say? What exculpation could there be for '_I was in hell for forty years and for the last ten I hopped off the rack to save my own worthless ass and picked up the knife and tortured others, including – please, please no – I mutilated Bela and maybe even…Ruby…too many blurring, merging faces, too loud a cacophony of screams to know for sure...and I liked it and I'll never forgive myself for that.'_

Unaware of Dean's internal, self-loathing diatribe, Joe told him, "Nobody's situation is ever the exactly the same as anyone else's situation, you can't compare, even with apples from the same tree – because they grew in slightly different spots so got different amounts of sun and shade. You and Sam, me and Mary, Sam and Teddy – all kids of the same two people, all different as night and day…But for what it's worth...your great-grandma, Ted's mom, once told me, _'heroes are people who are just a little bit __**more**__ human than the rest of us – they have a greater capacity for good and a greater capacity for evil. Saints are people who are just a little __**less **__human than the rest of us – they have less capacity to feel, and more capacity to detach. Hunters, Joseph, are always heroes, never saints._'"

"I think I get her sentiments and I appreciate her point, but…" living with the Technicolor and digital- surround-sound memories of what he'd done was nowhere near as bad as the fact that he couldn't stop remembering - and _feeling - _the furious _satisfaction_, the _pleasure_ he'd taken in cutting as they'd begged, and watching them bleed, and feeling _happy_ at their pathetic tears…_Bela; she was crying before I started on her, but stopped when I first cut…of them all, only Bela never wept, no matter how many times I sliced her…_

He stared rigidly at the carpet – he had to, the spots dancing in front of his eyes warned him he was in serious danger of hurling all over Joe's shoes as his stomach heaved and roiled in physical expression of his own self-disgust.

"You ever get into sci-fi at all?"

The question was so incongruous that Dean's nausea faded as he tried to assimilate what was being asked. Angry with himself, and not a little at Joe for continuing this little impromptu one-on-one therapy session, he fumbled out the lock-pick to give himself a second to compose himself to answer levelly, "You mean like _Close Encounters_ and _ET_ and all that? Nah…never had the time. Saw _Sixth Sense_ though… 'I see dead people'…if only Haley Joel knew."

"Mary – my sister – was big into it. Loved Arthur C. Clarke and Jules Verne, _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Journey To the Centre of the Earth_," Joe explained, "She'd have _loved _Star Trek…Actually, I _think_ it was _Star Trek_, the one where that little balding guy is a holographic doctor –"

"I thought he was the commander of this city that was really a spaceship lost in another galaxy?" Dean had caught a few episodes sporadically, but had had to turn it off when one of the vampire-like evil 'aliens' had reminded him way too much of Alistair; like the demon didn't _already_ feature too much in Dean's nightmares!

"Possibly. Anyway, in the episode, the doctor's basically a walking light show, so he decides that in order to be a proper personality, he downloads into his programming the best bits from various historical heroes."

Dean gave a derisive snort that actually helped as the stubborn pick flirted up in the lock and despite the gunge clicked back the tumbler. "Let me guess, he went totally Dark Side."

"Completely psychopathic." Joe agreed with inappropriate cheerfulness. "He had to have the personality traits removed. At the end, he feels a failure until the Captain basically told him what great-grandma Campbell told me about the difference between heroes and saints. My pop was a Marine, and he told me that courage was '_doing something even though it scares you to your toenails_'. Heroes aren't saints, because heroes have bad tempers and sometimes they drink too much and sometimes they're lechers or spendthrifts or depressives – if they didn't do those things and weren't like that, they'd be saints. But heroes draw strength and courage from the devil on one shoulder like they do from the angel on the other. You can't do what heroes do without having a dark side in the first place…and tapping into that Dark Side more often than not – you need a mixture of both."

Dean pushed the door open, managing to find enough guts himself to look at Joe. "I don't feel very heroic, what I did was…" _shameful, vile, wicked…insert the pejorative of your choice_. "And the fact I _enjoyed_ it makes me…" _so sick I can barely look at my face in the mirror any more, so full of self-loathing_…

"As _normal _a human being as everyone else is," Joe insisted, and stepped around him and raised both eyebrows at the large lion lying on its side, before his eyebrows disappeared into his hairline altogether when they got a look at the deep claw rents in the back of the door. "I can see why you didn't want anyone opening _this _door in a hurry."

"_Normal _human beings don't _get off _on to- _hurting _people." Dean challenged him harshly.

"Dean, in the right circumstances, _any _person _gets off_ on _hurting_ people." Joe contradicted flatly. "This guy, Arabian, I think, Kahlil Gibran, said once that the whole 'chain is only as strong as the weakest link' riff is a load of crap. Gibran said that chains, and people, were as strong as their strongest link, and also as weak as the weakest."

"Meaning?" demanded Dean as he pulled the bedspread off the bed, and with Joe's help, rolled Mega-Tiddles onto it. Even so it would be tough to carry the heavy weight the short distance down the staircase into the ballroom.

Finally Joe actually did a bit of huffing and puffing as he helped manoeuvre the lion, but he managed to speak quite steadily as he made his point. "Gibran said that the worst, most hateful and violent people in the world aren't some kind of freak exception, some kind of weak chain-link bogging down the erstwhile loftiness of human nature. Those hateful, violent people are that way because hate and violence are there in _all_ people. The capacity to kill and destroy and hate is in every single person in the world, just like the capacity to love and sacrifice and be happy is in everyone."

Joe paused to get his second wind as they pushed and heaved the huge beast into being wrapped in the bedclothes, then launched right back into the lecture:

"No matter how innocent or sweet people seem, or even actually really are nice, there is the capacity in _everyone_ to turn violent, to lash out without reason, to kill and destroy, just as there is the capacity in violent, hateful people to _repent_ and make reparation and help and protect. _Mother Theresa_ could have snapped and turned a gun on a crowd, because she shared the same basic _flawed _human nature as every other schmuck walking around the earth. That's what people don't _understand_. They don't _get_ that psychotics were once normal guys or gals who just snapped. Lost it. Went nutso. Ga-ga, out where the buses don't run. Most of the time we don't know why, or how, or whether it could have been be stopped – or whether we could be next. And that makes every single person walking around the earth a threat looking for a victim, or a saviour of lives in waiting, because we're _all_ both the _strongest _link _and the weakest_, and most of the time, not even we know which link we'll choose to be when shit happens."

"I think…Kahlil Gibran was pretty damn smart. On three?"

"Yep…and yep." Joe lifted the lion in the bedclothes in unison with Dean, and being nearest, backed slowly out of the door and carefully down the staircase. "We're hunters – daily we risk our lives – sometimes pay with our lives – to protect and keep safe innocent people. Problem is, _most _of those we save are innocent, but not very _nice._ They're…" he paused.

"Dicks and douche bags?" Dean suggested bitterly.

"I was going for 'ungrateful wretches', but yours will do. 'Dicks and douche bags'." Joe repeated. "Most of the time all we get every damn day, day in and day out, is contempt, disbelief, ridicule and hostility – and that's from the very people who we're saving from unspeakable horror, never mind anyone lucky enough to just be the peanut gallery. They insult us, refuse to believe us even when the truth is standing right there in front of them – usually slavering hungrily to devour their tender man-flesh – ignore, mock or argue _constantly _with _every_ instruction we give them to the point they make our job ten times harder as well as seriously endanger their own lives and ours as well, and even after we've kept them safe – or at least alive and mostly in one piece – they are so desperate to move to the State of Denial that they're shoving us out the door so we don't bleed too much on the Aubusson."

"Sounds like every hunt I've done," Dean mumbled, and his mind flashed back to Becky Warren – god, that seemed like centuries ago now…in a way, it was…like Indiana Jones had said, _it's not the years, it's the mileage_…poor little rich girl Rebecca, standing in her parents' luxury kitchen, her parents who 'live in Paris half the year'; he and Sam had _just _saved her brother's ass but she was _just_ desperate to get rid of them so she could dive straight into pretending the whole deal had been some sort of mass hallucination. She'd never even _offered _so much as twenty bucks for gas money.

"…not even twenty bucks for gas money." Joe unconsciously echoed. "Or fifty bucks for replacement ammo, a new side window for your car, or even just a hot meal, a sink to clean up in, or a decent bed for the night. When the guy – or little miss - who is the _reason why_ you're battered, bruised and broken responds by shoving you out the door and shutting it in your face it's just impossible to _be_ that _good_ and pull that whole 'rise above it' riff. I've tried to be noble, I've tried to be understanding, but sometimes I've failed - spectacularly. Sometimes I've had the opportunity for payback and I've put the boot in with _joy _and _vigour_…and what makes me feel guilty about it, son, is not that I took the opportunity to dish out some hurt, and get in some cheap shots, but that I _liked _it, I _gloated _at being able to do it and…in all honesty, I'd probably do it again anyway…Heroes, _not _saints."

"I get that, and you have a point, but what I did was…" Dean swallowed, and not because of the weight of lugging Leo across the lobby floor, "…_excessive_. I mean – the people who…I hurt…sorta deserved it…" _well, they wouldn't've been in the pit if they'd lived a life of hugs and kittens, that's for sure, but people like Bela? Given what scum her __**parents**__ were, she didn't deserve to be hurt worse than they'd already hurt her…_ "But I was…a lot more cruel than I needed to be, and I felt…"

"Justified?"

"Yeah…and satisfied. Like you said, I _liked _the chance to give back some of the crap, to dish out some of the sneers and mockery I'd had to take and get the chance to sing-song 'I told you so' lots and lots of times _and most of all I'm afraid of what I'll do the next time I have the chance to get my own back_." Dean nearly bit his tongue as the admission he'd never intended to make slipped past his lips.

"That's easy: nothing."

_Continued in Chapter 36…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

**Author's Note:** Christopher Heyerdahl, who played Alistair in Supernatural Season 4, played Todd-the-Wraith in Stargate: Atlantis. Robert Picardo played the holographic Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager, and Richard Woolsey in Stargate: Atlantis.


	36. Chapter 36

**HAVING A BALL**

**Chapter 36**

"How can you be so sure, when I'm not?" Dean gave up any pretence of lugging the lion, his chest feeling tight with shame and despair – what he'd wanted most of all was for Castiel to tell him that God had given him superhuman endurance in the face of all the crap that would or could be thrown at him, so he wouldn't falter and go Dungeon Master again.

"You got the chance for some payback, Dean. And you took it, and yes, you liked it, just like I did because unfortunately, while nobody deserves to get turned into a vampire or snacked on by a ghoul, innocent people and nice people are _not_ the same thing. But since then, have you had the opportunity to go Dark Side again and whup some ass?"

"Yeah…"

"And did you take it?"

"No, but –"

"But nothin'. Someone once said that you aren't defined by your abilities, but by your choices. You could have, but you wouldn't. You wanted to, but you didn't. Fortunately the Good Lord gave us human folk free will, and free will is _all about_ making choices. I don't deserve any medals for it, 'cause it's what I shoulda done in the first place anyways, but I _can_ look myself in the mirror every morning because I walked away _more _times than I gave in and put the boot in. You're not a monster, Dean, and you're not some wicked irredeemable guy who should be whipped or beaten or jailed for fifty years; if you were, you'd have taken _every _opportunity to get revenge on your account – I got revenge on my own account, but somethin' tells me that what really happened was that you were eventually lured into it by some pretty potent persuasion."

_Oh yeah, Alistair loved to slice chunks out of me with his knife, but he was even better at slicing me with his words and he knew it, that's why I was his go-to guy for kicks and giggles for thirty years…_

"…and that you 'n' Sam are clashing because of your different ways of dealing with it…"

Dean tuned back in and corrected, "It's not about what I _did_ – well, yeah it is in part, but…there's a lot going on right now, most of it's bad, most of it's gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets bet – hell, who am I kidding, before it goes worse still – and me and Sam…I feel like we're in one of those melodramatic daytime soaps, y'know, '_Days of our lives_' or something, like my character's storyline is to file for divorce for 'irreconcilable differences'."

"_Are _they irreconcilable?" It was a blunt question.

"Me and Sam used to get so much hassle at school, from the teachers," Dean spoke quietly, reflectively. "They always used to be going on about how we needed to develop an 'age-appropriate' relationship, about how 'normal' brothers preferred to be with their own peer group and not a sibling four years younger or older. I never got that for years, until I discovered girls –"

"And also discovered what a pain a little sister – or brother – could be hanging around, spying on you trying to unhook Melinda Markow's bra in the summerhouse and going around telling _everyone _you were kissing Julie on Monday and Suzy on Tuesday."

Joe recited a litany, but his voice was soft and his eyes bright, and Dean knew that Joe would have given probably anything, including his soul, to have had his little sister Mary Briddon alive these past forty-odd years.

"Yeah, _girls_. Man talk about a Revelation. Anyway, me and Sam have spent ninety percent of our lives being right next to each other, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-sixty-five days a year. I never realised until…I nearly got ganked by this djinn… that in _normal_ families siblings grow up and grow _apart_ and get married and have kids and maybe see each other on birthdays and holidays. It's not normal for a thirty year old guy to be so used to sleeping only four feet away from his little brother that he can't sleep alone because he can't sleep at all when he can't hear anyone else breathing."

"And you resent that, and him, now?" Joe asked before meaningfully holding up his end of the bed sheet.

Obediently, Dean tightened his hold on his end, though he didn't move for a moment. "No, never that, but…it's not even that he's having sex with Ruby…I've not exactly been a humanist in my choices of female company either – there was this succubus once that was amazing…" _and Angel Anna, who was also amazing…_ "it's just that every time we seem to open our mouths to each other these days we end up…"

"Having a difference of opinion?" Joe interjected.

"Oh yeah…a 'free and frank discussion', an 'exchange of opposing views'. Somehow we always seem to end up having…what's the euphemism? 'We had words'. We always seem to be having 'words'."

"About everything and nothing," Joe acknowledged. "Went through a real sticky patch with my wife for a while after Mary was killed – we couldn't agree on _anything_ except that each other was just 'impossible' – but considering some of the torrid times we'd gone through as hunters it wasn't a particularly traumatic period in our lives in any other way than we just couldn't seem to agree on anything and deciding what to have for breakfast turned into a fight."

"That's where I'm coming from. We fight, I get angry, I switch to silent running 'cause I'm afraid of saying something I _won't _regret, and getting into an actual _fight _I won't hold back from – I'm sure Sam feels exactly the same way. At the time my anger is sharp and honed, like a knife, but trying to describe the actual _argument_…the details always seem as fuzzy and messy as candyfloss. You know, those couples who put 'irreconcilable differences' on the divorce petition because they couldn't for the life of either of them tell you _why _they've decided each other is impossible."

"I've been there, close enough at any rate…" Joe admitted. "Everything is so _clearly wrong_ you can see it inside your head but what the _real _problem is…it's so _nebulous _you just can't articulate it."

"That's as good a description as any."

"Maybe you'll just have to agree to disagree. We're all different, even brothers and sisters born to the same parents." Joe advised, reiterating his earlier 'apples on the same tree' point.

"I guess…after all the years and all the mileage, we _are_ different, and in the end that's what it comes down to. I remember reading somewhere once, 'different enough to be childish, foolish enough to say it, and prideful enough not to let it go.' In the end, we both revert to type and the carousel of argument goes round and round."

"Then I guess one of you will just have to risk jumpin' off and stoppin' the ride."

Dean snorted. "Sam…"

Was right there, looking down at them - at Dean - from the first floor balcony, holding one end of something enveloped in a large garishly pink silk bed sheet. As was too often the case these days, his face was a mystery Dean couldn't decipher and which gave no clues as to how long he'd been there, looking and listening. Dean had been so focussed on manhandling Super-Tiddles that Lenore and her entire vampire nest could have sauntered up behind him while he was panting and heaving and working up a sweat.

_Concluded in Chapter 37…_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

Author's Note: the 'different' quote was by fanfiction writer Jael Lynn, from her story in _The Sentinel _fandom, _Auld Lang Syne_. It can, I believe, be found at Cascade Library story archive.


	37. Chapter 37

**HAVING A BALL **

**Chapter 37**

"There's nothing we can do about the claw marks in the door or the wreck in the original honeymoon suite," Dean told Sam and Joe.

Dean and Joe's little heart-to-heart being terminated, the two of them had simply bundled the lion inside the bottom ballroom doors and then they'd gone up to the upper doors and lent Sam a hand with Stinky Pete – who, as a still _bona fide _zombie reeked to high heaven – no pun intended - and put the kibosh on any conversation, never mind deep 'n' meaningful. Even Joe's eternal equilibrium had taken a bit of a knock as he'd coughed and blinked rapidly. Sam, shrewdly, had bundled Pete up as much as possible in the bed sheets, which were now gross and ruined.

"They'll just hafta be part o' local folklore," Joe shrugged, "like those close marks in the room door. Weird and inexplicable. We'd best get outside 'cause dawn is…_yikes_."

Prudently taking _that_ as an appropriate cue to shag ass, Dean and Sam wasted no time, giving one last sweep of the room to ensure everyone was present and correct to fulfil Castiel's criterion, before they let the doors swing shut behind them and went across the lobby and out of the front doors, to where Uriel and Castiel stood, immobile and emotionless. Nearby Jerry was huddled in on himself, shaking visibly. Was it Dean's imagination, or was Uriel watching Sam with a little too much interest in comparison to his prior indifference?

"It's done." Dean told Castiel urgently, as faint pink streaks very reminiscent of the honeymoon suite were already making inroads in the uniform black of the horizon. "We'd best get going."

Sam held out his hand and shook Joe's. "Thanks for you help."

"_Es nada_," Joe smiled and shook hands with Dean, who let his gratitude show on his face.

Joe hadn't solved any of his problems, but he'd given Dean food for thought, and Dean actually felt a little lighter in his step – sometimes being able to unburden yourself to someone who could be totally impartial because they didn't know, and in fact didn't really care, the players in the game really was a big help. Joe would clearly carry on doing what he could do as a hunter and obviously not bother worrying about some Apocalypse he couldn't prevent or do anything about. It was an enviable attitude.

Joe assured them, "I'll see Jerry safely inside once Castiel has done his thing; Jerry's a mite stressed right now but he's smart enough to pretend he's been at the fancy dress ball all night. And I'd best clean up the mess first while you get going…" Joe jerked his head at the dead Faerie, which would put a big crimp in their 'nothing to see here' plan if she wasn't disposed of.

"Thanks, Joe." Dean's voice carried a sincerity over and above the immediate.

For once taking a leaf out of Sam's book and ignoring Castiel and Uriel's presence as Sam got in the passenger side of the Impala, Dean made to head for the trunk to get some blankets to cover the shattered windows…which were now whole as if they'd always been so. He raised his eyebrows at Castiel who looked…sheepishly pleased with himself. _Nice one, Cas_.

He gunned the engine, Thin Lizzy's _The Boys Are Back In Town_ spilling out into the interior, and peeled out back onto the road. Neither man looked back, because hunters rarely did.

Dean reached out and killed the music before Sam could as the younger Winchester pulled out the map book and squinted at it. These back country roads were barely lit at night and trying to see where you were going required better eyesight than many possessed, never mind trying to read small print in the jiggling confines of a car. With the hotel no longer in sight in the rear-view, Dean coasted to a stop at the crossroads junction leading out of Maple River, the Impala's engine smoothly idling thanks to his TLC as Sam peered at the map doubtfully.

"Where do we go from here?" Dean asked, belatedly realising the loaded implications of the automatic question even as the words escaped his lips a microsecond too late to be stopped or rephrased.

"…I have no idea."

And they both knew Sam wasn't talking about the junction in front of them.

_The End_

© 2009, The Cat's Whiskers

**Author's Note** – this story should have been all posted by the time 'Sex and Violence' was shown on UK TV, unfortunately, a corrupted hard drive wiped every chapter after No.20, so I apologise for the delay. I know that the last few chapters have been a bit 'deep and meaningful' dialogue heavy; in the original story there was a bit more action, but given I've tried to retype the story as fast as possible because I promised readers it was complete and would be posted with a week initially, I have truncated a lot of the 'prettying up sidebar bits'. (I also had _Give & Take_ finished and another short story dealing with Sam's blood addiction, that I will post as soon as I have retyped them.)

And yes, Uriel's 'helpful' concession to Sam was of course a bit of baddie plotting, since he goes Dark Side a couple of eps after S&V! I realise the ending is a bit downbeat, but that's where the Season finale is heading, more so than usual for even Eric Kripke and company!


End file.
